DUBAI: Bilal Saleh has been interested in food and cooking for as long as he can remember. Growing up in Baalbeck, Lebanon, he would watch his grandfather, a butcher, prepare his own meals with care and discipline.
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“I was fascinated by the way he handled ingredients and respected food,” Saleh tells Arab News. “Sometimes he would call me over to teach me the basics — how to chop, how to prepare and how to be patient in the kitchen.”
That early curiosity deepened when his father opened a bakery. Saleh spent his summers and afternoons after school working there. “That’s when I realized the kitchen was not just a hobby, it was where I truly belonged,” he says.
His family farmed wheat, lentils, peas and seasonal produce. “Looking back, this was my true culinary school,” he says. Winters were marked by slow-cooked dishes simmering for hours on a wood stove, often finished with “a final touch of fried garlic and olive oil” — a moment he describes as “magic.”
