Little Beirut

Edgware Road is a magnet for all Arabic nations - a quick burka or keffiyeh head-count, plus the preponderance of garish gold-leafed furniture shops, confirms that - but the 100,000 or so Lebanese, the majority of whom fled the country's civil war in the Seventies, are most visible at the Paddington end.

There's Beirut Express, a fast-food vision of gold and neon, where Lebanese families roll up on Sunday afternoons for bite-size tabbouleh, shrinam or jeliab. The nearby Al-Dar Restaurant has outside tables equipped with petrol-pump-sized hookah pipes. "I've lived here for 17 years," says Said, puffing away. "Lebanese people are more sophisticated than, well, some others," he muses, casting dark glances at the Sunday strollers. "We are outward-looking; we are not insular. But we like to keep our culture intact, wherever we are in the world."

On Edgware Road, this means the Babylon Salon, the Al-Ahram Bookstore, where you can pick up Lebanese fashion magazines, and Daminis, where you can turn those fashion tips into reality with the latest styles of shalwar kameez, and join the endless promenade of styled-up sons and daughters of sheikhs and oil magnates cruising the W2 strip. The restaurants feature live Lebanese music at weekends, and if it all leaves you hankering after the real thing, pop into Wonder Travel, where a flight to Beirut can be had for as little as £320.