“If one day I had to give my mother a gift, it would be a restaurant. And if I had to choose a place, it would be the Arab World Institute”
A beautiful tribute from a son to his mother. The famous actor and comedian Jamel Debbouze has just offered a restaurant to Fatima Debbouze, located on the roof of the Arab World Institute in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.
If the artist’s mother is not in the kitchen of the restaurant called “Dar Mima” in reference to the diminutive of this one, she actively participated in the development of the menu by including family recipes. Lahcen Hafid, chef at the Ritz, completed the development of the menu which offers traditional Moroccan and oriental dishes, including three versions of couscous and tajines, but also grilled lobster and cockerel in haute cuisine style. Without forgetting signature cocktails and the famous mint tea.
“If one day I had to give my mother a gift, it would be a restaurant. And if I had to choose a place, it would be the Arab World Institute”, confided Jamel Debbouze in 2007. To make his dream come true, the artist appealed to the talent of the architect Laurent Gonzalez. The result, an exceptional restaurant, a veritable oriental paradise on the roofs of Paris, described as a “dream of the Orient between heaven and earth” by the partner of the artist Paris Society.
The Institut du monde arabe is symbolic for the Debbouze family, since it is the place where Jamel Debbouze performed his first sketch, and the first place in Paris that the artist introduced his mother to.