Is Paris’ ‘Dirty Lemon’ The Chicest Lesbian Cocktail Bar In The Field? | GO Magazine

a really smart beverage bar is one thing our very own society has actually very long yearned for. Most of us have sipped a gin and tonic from a synthetic glass in a strobe-lit cellar, questioning if using you to definitely a lesbian club for a primary time was advisable all things considered.

Cue:
Dirty Lemon
, a queer women’s space in the heart of Paris that’s as comfortable and trendy since it is fashionable and cool, helping up small dishes and top-shelf liquors. The club  – created by designer Viviane Chil-Hagopian – seems completely queer and entirely elegant in fuel and aesthetic, bathed with peach colours and huge open plan windows that enable the evening’s light and warmth to flooding through area. If Dirty Lemon happened to be an individual, you’d likely nice her.

Three-years back, Ruba Khoury, a Parisian chef – that’s Palestinian, created and brought up in Dubai, knowledgeable from inside the U.S. – made the lesbian date place we’ve all dreamt of on a part street in Paris’ trendy 11th arrondissement.

The Dirty Lemon story started six in years past, whenever Ruba woke with a nasty episode of meals poisoning. Retracing her steps from her sick-bed, she scrolled through the possible offenders. “No I consumed that in the home, myself and my pal had the ditto out at supper and she’s okay, so what the hell did we consume?” she tells GO in a cozy spot of her beverage bar.

Her brain fundamentally landed on an orange piece floating in a vodka soft drink she’d got at a local club the night time prior to. She’d already been on wing-woman obligation for a friend; “i did not desire to go,” she states, “I knew the bar, it is extremely dingy and not my personal scene; not very good drinks and simply total weird vibes.”

In her infirmed haze, she appeared it up. “evidently citric acid fruits are awesome absorbing of bacteria, assuming it really is mistreated – you are aware, during the refrigerator, from the refrigerator, dirty arms coming in contact with it – it can be very intoxicating.”

“I was very pissed, I became like, ‘fuck this dirty lemon, one-day we swear to God i will open a spot that is for ladies, for lesbians, your queer neighborhood with great beverages and good music and good vibes and I also’m gonna call it Dirty Lemon.'”

And voilà, from the ashes of stomach-aching-despair, a lemon tree increased – and what an outstanding production truly. In, Dirty Lemon is s’il vous plaits and 2 Côte du Rhône, because the bartenders aerial pour house beverage after residence cocktail – your ex Next Door (saké and green apple), Boob work (tequila and melon, garnished with fixed jambon) while the Britney Spritz (do-it-yourself ratafai with blood lime) becoming of specific notice.

The club itself is immaculate – numerous beverage eyeglasses and rows of bitters tend to be aligned in pristine order, alongside garnishes of fat olives and rose flower petals and (fittingly) sliced lemon wedges (bacteria-free, naturally).

At 7pm, four impossibly fashionable females drink martinis at a large part table. These include helping Queer Intercourse as well as the City (Samantha would certainly have strung within the woman Sapphic period, while Miranda and Che would be all dreamy-eyed within the place). The ambiance is actually cold and everyday, facilitated of the top-notch the speakers, that offer soft acoustics that allow you to whisper sweet everything’s in your partner’s ear canal, although the standard concurrently envelops the space. We sit using my notebook within stone bar, eating food i did not actually think I’d get to eat in a lesbian bar.

Ruba trained in Michelin-star restaurants across Paris. Her diet plan is actually tiny: seven meals, each packaging a punch of level, feel and flavor – thick essential olive oil, cushiony baguettes, spongy falafel, creamy tahini, sumacy eggplant.

“we you will need to bridge the flavours and what we spent my youth eating, making use of Parisian techniques we learnt as a chef,” she claims. “I happened to be brought up on Mediterranean food therefore it is something i am aware from bottom of my personal center – there’s nothing artificial, it’s true genuine flavours.”

It’s such exclusive knowledge – the one that could just obviously have been channeled through Ruba – to stay in a bar and taste the center of Palestine, have the quality of France (in anything you taste to discover), while also experiencing the incubation and affirmation of a conscious queer room.

“Honestly, you’ll find nothing out there for people, absolutely nowhere you’ll have all three parts – great vibes, good products, great songs and feel safe and feel fine to stay in a bar alone as a lady,” Ruba claims. “i can not even consider someplace – even now – where we can simply go and feel fine, it really is like we want to appear right here on a regular basis.”

This amorphous queer room additionally has events every single other week-end, “where we bring queer or feminine or fraction group DJs,” in addition to more mellow weekday events like speed matchmaking, queer-e-oke evening, publication clubs, artwork overall performance and tarot readings. “that has been usually the theory,” states Ruba, “to open a spot which could host these flexible events.” That is the appeal of beginning a cocktail club in place of a cafe or restaurant, Ruba explains. “folks are more stimulating, it really is more natural, something sometimes happens, men and women can start dancing should they need, merely a very enjoyable, liquid, queer experience.”

After their particular tiny plates and 3rd beverage, the homosexual gender while the City ladies leave, to some launch occasion of some cool Parisian thing. As they set off, additionally the sun begins to set, Paris’ Queerati ascend regarding the place, which makes it half casual fine-dining cafe, and half queer bar whoever clients spills out onto the roadways of Paris (no country tends to make chain smoking look a lot better than France).

While the location fulfills up, many descend down the steps to Dirty Lemon’s secret speakeasy – a revamped drink cellar, romantic and cool. Obviously you can easily make an unprecedented criterion of queer ladies’ room on street degree, however when the offer could there be (and when it comes with cocktails of your calibre) – dykes stay devoted with their underground sources.

Je-te verrai à Paris… with a Britney Spritz at hand.

Dirty Lemon, 24 Rue de la Folie Méricourt, Paris.  Open Tuesday-Saturday 6pm-2am