Unlike many successful chefs who attend culinary institutes, Mireille Hayek has no training from culinary schools. She also has no prior kitchen experience, as she has worked in her family business from the beginning. What she brings to her restaurants is a personal, authentic relationship with Lebanese cuisine, which she learned at home by cooking for her family the way her family knows how to do it.
Dani Chakour, Mireille’s brother who acts as the CEO of the Em Sherif group, explains the idea behind Mireille’s restaurants in an exclusive interview for Official Bespoke: “She is the mother of Sherif, so ‘Em Sherif’ is her nickname. Her dream was to create a restaurant that makes you feel at home, without a menu. You can come in and eat what has been cooked for you.”
That idea became the most influential Lebanese restaurant of the past fifteen years.
The Road to Em Sherif
Mireille Hayek opened her first restaurant, La Parilla, in Beirut in 2006. Her brother Dani initially encouraged her. The restaurant succeeded. In 2009, she opened Yasmina, an Indian fusion concept named after her daughter. It too succeeded.
But success with other cuisines sharpened her awareness of what she actually wanted to do. As Arabian Business reported in an April 2026 profile of the family, “Mireille longed to open a spot that honored her Lebanese heritage.” In 2011, Em Sherif opened. The name is her Arabic nickname, meaning “the mother of Sherif,” after her son. The restaurant is a formal fine dining space on the surface: marble tables, hand-painted murals, glittering chandeliers, live Arabic music. But its operating principle is domestic. As the Em Sherif official website describes it, the restaurant delivers “a traditional yet refined take on the multifaceted Lebanese cuisine that triggers fond memories of home cooking while simultaneously delivering a luxurious, first-class dining experience.”
There is no menu in the traditional Beirut format; instead, an endless stream of at least thirty plates of mezze dishes appears. Smooth hummus is topped with olive oil. Fattoush is cut into small pieces. Vine leaves are rolled up. The dishes are served in copper containers.
The Daughter Who Took the Kitchen Forward
As Mireille’s daughter, Yasmina grew up watching her mother cook. “When I was growing up, food was always at the heart of everything,” Yasmina said to Arabian Business. “I watched my mother at the restaurant, but I also watched her host at home for our friends and relatives. Everything she prepared was from scratch. It was really inspirational for me.”
Yasmina took her love for cooking even further when she trained at the Institut Paul Bocuse in France and worked in Michelin-starred kitchens in Paris and Copenhagen with chefs such as Mathieu Pacaud and Jean-François Piège. Yasmina returned to Em Sherif as Executive Chef, bringing her formal training to Lebanese cuisine. “Our food is authentic, with a hint of modernity and sophistication,” she told Lebanese Stories. “We are carrying on traditions in our own way.”
Yasmina, according to The World’s 50 Best, “is the leader of the culinary revolution,” whereas Mireille is the founder and chef. These two women, the former being self-taught and instinctive and the latter being classical and world-traveled, have achieved something which neither of them would have achieved alone.
The Awards and the Expansion
Em Sherif has been a consistent presence on the MENA 50 Best Restaurants list, peaking at 13th place in 2026. The same list awarded it the Art of Hospitality Award in 2023. According to the World’s 50 Best, this award recognizes “quality, consistency, authenticity and perseverance in the face of challenges that would bring most to their knees.” Yasmina, upon receiving this award, told the World’s 50 Best that “Em Sherif is a flagbearer for Lebanese culture and hospitality.”
Starting with one restaurant in Beirut in 2011, Em Sherif now runs 12 restaurants across the Middle East and Europe, including Harrods in London, Hotel de Paris in Monaco, and locations in Dubai, Kuwait, Egypt, and Qatar. The Em Sherif family founded Em Sherif Art Foundation in 2025 with Mireille, Dani Chakour, and curator Sherif Hayek to showcase contemporary Lebanese art in Em Sherif restaurants around the world. A new Em Sherif location, Em Sherif au Musée, opened in September 2025 on the esplanade of the Sursock Museum in Beirut.
“Our country gave us the gift of a culture of which we’re so proud,” Yasmina told the World’s 50 Best. “‘Beirut Mon Amour’ is the sentence we’ve been using in all our restaurants to declare our love for the city and country that gave us so much.”
The dining room in Beirut still has no printed menu. What arrives at the table is what has been cooked today, and it has never needed to be anything else.
