{"id":58560,"date":"2019-10-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/58560\/downtown-beiruts-iconic-grand-cafe-closing-after-17-years"},"modified":"2023-05-08T12:54:05","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T12:54:05","slug":"downtown-beiruts-iconic-grand-cafe-closing-after-17-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/en\/58560\/downtown-beiruts-iconic-grand-cafe-closing-after-17-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown Beirut&#8217;s Iconic Grand Cafe Closing After 17 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"After 17 years of business, Downtown Beirut&#8217;s iconic <b>Grand Cafe<\/b> is kissing the heart of the city goodbye.<br \/>  <br \/>  The renowned cafe-resto was the first to open after the revival of Beirut&#8217;s downtown. It joins a league of many restaurants, cafes, and businesses that have slowly closed up shop over the past few years, effectively turning the area into a ghost-town. <br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/58560.png\"><br \/>  <br \/>  <br \/>  After having been closed for two and a half years, Grand Cafe re-opened its Nejmeh Sqaure branch on New Year&#8217;s Eve back in 2018. <br \/>  <br \/>  This came after a governmental decision to restore pedestrian access into Nejmeh Square for the first time since 2015, when thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to protest the the ongoing waste crisis. <br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/58560-1.png\"><br \/>  <br \/>  <br \/>  Having undergone the economic deterioration once before, the iconic cafe seems to be less resilient this time around. <br \/>  <br \/>  For 17 years, Grand Cafe has been a go-to for friends and families, bringing people together over delicious Lebanese food and shisha.<br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/58560-2.png\"><br \/>  <br \/>  <br \/>  As the country&#8217;s economy continues to deteriorate with no signs of redemption happening any time soon, more businesses seem to be giving in to this sad and hopeless situation. <br \/>  <br \/>  Grand Cafe&#8217;s other branch on Raouche is still open.     <figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"187\" data-id=\"438755\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-4-250x187.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-438755\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-4-250x187.png 250w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-4-600x450.png 600w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-4.png 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/figure><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"140\" data-id=\"438757\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-5-250x140.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-438757\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-5-250x140.png 250w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-5-600x335.png 600w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-5-768x429.png 768w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-5.png 838w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/figure><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"162\" data-id=\"438759\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-6-250x162.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-438759\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-6-250x162.png 250w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-6-600x388.png 600w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/58560-6.png 650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/figure><\/figure>    ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After 17 years of business, Downtown Beirut&#8217;s iconic <b>Grand Cafe<\/b> is kissing the heart of the city goodbye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":438761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ai_generated_summary":"","_preview_accessed":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"media-embed-type":[],"class_list":["post-58560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"authorship":[144],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Downtown Beirut&#039;s Iconic Grand Cafe Closing After 17 Years<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After 17 years of business, Downtown Beirut&#039;s iconic Grand Cafe is kissing the heart of the city goodbye.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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