The owner of a Lebanese restaurant in Gżira will be forfeiting his break this summer and heading to Beirut to be part of an international effort to provide an open kitchen for those afflicted by the massive explosion which rocked the city on August 5. 

Hany Harb, the Lebanese chef who runs Ali Baba, will be joined on his mission by another four chefs.

They will be heading “straight to Beirut” on August 17.

Speaking to Times of Malta, he was astonished by the number of responses he received.

“I received over 2,000 messages on our Facebook page, on WhatsApp; my phone has been working nonstop. I have just spent all day answering people and thanking them,” Hany said.

“Donations are still coming in so I can’t give you an exact figure of how much money we will be able to gather. We would like to keep this going as much as possible, as this is important to all of us. We are chefs, and this is what we do – we want to help those who are suffering in our home country, and hope we will inspire others to do the same.”

Hany and his crew are scheduled to work in Beirut until August 23, the first of multiple trips. They are working on setting up a company to formalise the process of donations, and have already established contact with Souk el Tayeb, a community kitchen that is already working to feed people in the area.

Residing in Malta for the past 35 years, Harb has long been aware of the problems his country has faced over the past decades.

It seems that years of neglect were responsible for the problems which led to the biggest explosion the war-torn country has ever seen, leading to billions of dollars’ worth of damages and hundreds injured, missing or dead.

This article was amended on August 10 to reflect the changed dates for the flights.