Is Actually Paris‘ ‚Dirty Lemon‘ The Chicest Lesbian Beverage Pub Around? | GO Mag

a severely sophisticated beverage club is one thing our community provides long yearned for. Most of us have sipped a gin and tonic from a synthetic glass in a strobe-lit cellar, wondering if having anyone to a lesbian club for an initial day had been a good option all things considered.

Cue:
Dirty Lemon
, a queer ladies room in the middle of Paris which is as comfortable and chic as it’s stylish and cool, helping right up tiny plates and top-shelf liquors. The club  – created by architect Viviane Chil-Hagopian – seems completely queer and entirely feminine in power and aesthetic, bathed with peach tints and big open plan windowpanes that allow the evening’s light and warmth to flood through room. If Dirty Lemon were an individual, might almost certainly fancy this lady.

Three years back, Ruba Khoury, a Parisian cook – that is Palestinian, created and raised in Dubai, informed from inside the U.S. – made the lesbian day spot most of us have dreamt of on a part street in Paris‘ fashionable 11th arrondissement.

The Dirty Lemon tale began six years back, when Ruba woke with a nasty episode of food poisoning. Retracing the woman strategies from the woman sick bed, she scrolled through possible culprits. „No I ate that in the home, me and my pal met with the ditto out at dinner and she is great, so what the hell did I consume?“ she says to GO in a comfortable place of her beverage bar.

Her head at some point got on a lemon slice drifting in a vodka soft drink she’d got at a local club the night before. She’d already been on wing-woman responsibility for a pal; „i did not need to go,“ she states, „we understood the bar, it is extremely dingy rather than my personal scene; of low quality products and simply total weird vibes.“

Inside her infirmed haze, she appeared it up. „It seems that citrus fruits are very absorbing of micro-organisms, of course, if it is mistreated – you realize, from inside the fridge, out of the fridge, filthy arms touching it – it can be extremely intoxicating.“

„I found myself thus pissed, I became like, ‘fuck this filthy lemon, someday I swear to Jesus i’ll open a spot which is for females, for lesbians, the queer area with good products and great music and good vibes and I also’m gonna refer to it as Dirty Lemon.'“

And voilà, through the ashes of stomach-aching-despair, a lemon tree became – and exactly what an outstanding development it is. In, Dirty Lemon is all s’il vous plaits and 2 Côte du Rhône, as bartenders aerial pour residence beverage after residence beverage – the Girl nearby (saké and eco-friendly apple), Boob work (tequila and melon, garnished with cured jambon) in addition to Britney Spritz (homemade ratafai with blood tangerine) being of specific note.

The club is actually immaculate – several cocktail spectacles and rows of bitters are aligned in clean order, alongside garnishes of plump olives and flower petals and (fittingly) sliced orange wedges (bacteria-free, without a doubt).

At 7pm, four impossibly stylish ladies drink martinis at a large part table. They have been helping Queer Intercourse additionally the City (Samantha would have strung here in the woman Sapphic period, while Miranda and Che was all dreamy-eyed during the place). The ambiance is actually chilled and informal, facilitated by top-notch the speakers, which offer silky acoustics where you can whisper nice every little thing’s inside lover’s ear canal, whilst baseline simultaneously envelops the room. I remain using my notebook from the stone bar, eating i did not actually ever consider I’d will consume in a lesbian bar.

Ruba competed in Michelin-star restaurants across Paris. Her selection is little: seven dishes, each packing a punch of degree, surface and flavor – heavy essential olive oil, cushiony baguettes, spongy falafel, creamy tahini, sumacy eggplant.

„I attempt to bridge the flavours and what we was raised ingesting, using the Parisian methods we learnt as a chef,“ she says. „I happened to be brought up on Mediterranean food so it is some thing I’m sure through the bottom of my cardiovascular system – there is nothing synthetic, it’s genuine authentic flavours.“

It really is these an original knowledge – one which could only really have already been channeled through Ruba – to sit in a bar and style the center of Palestine, have the quality of France (in whatever you taste and view), while also feeling the incubation and affirmation of an aware queer room.

„really, you’ll find nothing available for people, there’s no place you can get all three parts – good vibes, great drinks, great songs and feel as well as feel ok to stay in a club alone as a woman,“ Ruba claims. „I can’t also contemplate a spot – right now – where we can simply go and feel ok, its like you want to appear right here all the time.“

This amorphous queer room additionally hosts events every single other weekend, „where we bring queer or female or fraction group DJs,“ in addition to more mellow weekday occasions like speed dating, queer-e-oke evening, guide groups, artwork overall performance and tarot readings. „That was always the idea,“ says Ruba, „to start a spot which could coordinate these flexible events.“ This is the beauty of opening a cocktail bar without a cafe or restaurant, Ruba describes. „People are more stimulating, it is even more natural, everything can occur, folks will start dance should they wanna, only a enjoyable, substance, queer knowledge.“

After their own tiny plates and third beverage, the gay Sex and also the City women depart, off to some launch occasion of some cool Parisian thing. While they set off, while the sunlight begins to set, Paris‘ Queerati ascend regarding the venue, which makes it half casual fine-dining restaurant, and half queer club whose patrons spills out onto the roads of Paris (no nation tends to make chain smoking look much better than France).

Given that venue fills up, numerous descend along the stairs to Dirty Lemon’s secret speakeasy – a revamped wine cellar, intimate and cool. Demonstrably possible make an unmatched requirement of queer ladies‘ area on road amount, but once the offer will there be (and when referring with cocktails of your calibre) – dykes remain dedicated for their underground origins.

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

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