ilili is an extension of three generations of Massoud family stories. These stories are enriched in joy, loss, struggle, resilience and 100 years of outstanding hospitality making our establishment historic while creating new beginnings. Chef Philippe Massoud’s concept was simple: to revive and bring this ancient cuisine to a public who hadn’t properly experienced it.

Pictured: Massoud Restaurant and Catering Downtown Beirut (Iskandar Massoud and his brothers) – 1920’s

Growing up in the Golden Age of Lebanon, Massoud began his career early at his family’s Coral Beach Hotel in Beirut. He took on an apprenticeship with the hotel’s head chef, where he learned the trade of regional flavors enjoyed within a glamourous hospitality. Because of the civil war at the time, “the hotel was a haven of sanity in a land of insanity. Beirut was going up in flames around us, and the hotel became an oasis of peaceful living.

he worsening political situation in Beirut prompted his parents to send him to the United States in 1985 to attend high school. After high school, he enrolled in Cornell University’s School of Hotel Management and finished his Hotel, Resort and Restaurant Development degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology.Since arriving in the United States, Philippe discovered store-bought hummus to be an unholy assault against the taste buds and pita pockets to be a poor representation of the Levant’s traditional bread-making.