From the mid ’90s to the early 2000s, having a round of “zeitouna,” or “olive,” shots was rarely planned for Beirut bargoers. A tray of shot glasses containing vodka, a splash of lemon juice, a couple dashes of Tabasco and a pickled olive would mysteriously appear when the energy of the night conjured them. As a rite of passage for most coming-of-age celebrations at the beginning of the new millennium, the classic zeitouna established itself as a guaranteed staple at any Beirut bar.
The origin myth of the mixture is a blurry one, but the most commonly told version is that the shot was invented in a dive bar in the Hamra district by a man called Amigo in the 1990s. In the intervening years, the drink has joined the thousands of Lebanese people that have traveled abroad during Lebanon’s latest waves of emigration, making appearances in Berlin, Brooklyn, Barcelona, Paris and Riga. Along the way, the zeitouna became known as the Doudou, rumored to be so named because serving it brought in a lot of dollars (“doudou” is slang for “dollars”). But back in its birthplace of Beirut, three decades since its rumored inception, the iconic shot is evolving in step with a rapidly changing city.
Camo Njeim, beverage director at Wisors Hospitality Group, which runs The Terrible Prince, Kissproof and Vyvyan’s, says the Doudou has always been the top-selling shot at his bars. At The Terrible Prince, Njeim reinterprets the shot as a cocktail, which he sees as a tribute to Amigo, “a career working bartender that would sacrifice his life for hospitality,” he says. The drink is pre-batched, then sees the addition of olive and parsley oils, a meaty, smoked Spanish olive and a pickled chile pepper instead of Tabasco, all served in a chilled Nick & Nora glass straight from the freezer. “If you like Martinis, dirty Martinis, olives, Doudou shots, you would find it a really elegant version while respecting the components,” says Njeim. “There’s heat, there’s the olive—the star is the big olive—it’s hard not to like it.”
Yves Massoud is the bartending co-partner at Fizz, a neighborhood bar in the Mar Mikhael area. He used to work with Wisors at Kissproof and, like Njeim, he spent Monday nights at Amigo’s. Fizz’s Doudou is also an ode to Amigo. “Doudou is part of the culture and part of Lebanese hospitality. This is how it was created; he’s the master of hosting people,” says Massoud.
The Fizz Doudou maintains the essence of the classic, but Massoud adds chipotle Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce to enhance the smoke and umami notes. The olives are local, sourced from another partner’s lands in the southern Lebanon village of Lebaa. (While Fizz makes its own hot sauce, bartenders don’t use it in the Doudou yet; it’s a matter of mechanics as the bottles’ stoppers make it difficult to dash the correct amount.)
For Rani Al Rajji, owner and architect behind the bar Brazzaville, the key to a perfect Doudou is to not cut corners anywhere in the simple shot, even when sticking to the old-school recipe. “First of all, we don’t use low-grade ingredients. When it comes to the olives, we get good olives. That’s not very difficult in Lebanon,” he says. “We don’t get those Martini olives because at the end of the day they’re coming from abroad, they’re imported, we don’t know the origin. They look fake. They look plasticky.” The same goes for the rest of the ingredients. “Original Tabasco, not a knock-off, and we put a few drops of brine, freshly squeezed lemon juice—I think the key is simplicity and the right ingredients, not going cheap,” he says.
Al Rajji is hoping to create an olive brine extract infused with the heat element that he can use in a Doudou-inspired cocktail rather than a shot. “The era where people were drinking a lot of shots is kinda over, in the sense that even the young generation, they’re looking for low ABV, they’re looking for healthier stuff,” he says. “Everything has to change; you can take the highlights of certain things and try to reinvent them and try to recompose them into something relevant.”
Today, the Doudou symbolizes two different Beiruts. For Lebanese people abroad, they’re a nostalgic vestige of a youth set in a Beirut that has long since disintegrated. After a financial collapse, the onset of a global pandemic, the 2020 port explosion, and now the Israeli aggression along the southern border and in neighboring Palestine, the Beirut of the ’90s has become as romanticized as the one of the ’60s, Beirut’s so-called “golden age.” For those still in Lebanon, the new Doudous are a reinterpretation of those same fantasies, but one that captures the current stubborn, creative energy of the city.
When expats and residents reunite at a bar, the Doudou becomes a blend of what Beirut used to be and what it could become if it were a home no one had to leave behind. The trick is to remember what that looks like when the morning comes.