Restaurants across the globe try to bring the farm to the table, but there aren’t many places where you can gaze across your plate upon the farms themselves. Tawlet Ammiq — a restaurant in Lebanon’s fertile Bekaa Valley — is just a 90-minute drive from the bustle of Beirut, but it feels a world away.

There, on a hill overlooking “Lebanon’s breadbasket,” a visitor can sip wine pressed from grapes grown one town over, munch on salads tossed with greens from the farms sprawling out below, and savor freekeh (an ancient grain) stewed with livestock that once grazed on the hills that cocoon the restaurant. At Tawlet Ammiq, the people, the food and the land that gave birth to them both are all within sight.

On warm Saturdays and Sundays especially, Tawlet Ammiq is packed with Lebanese and foreign diners nibbling on such fine fare as roast trout, grilled cauliflower marinated in tahini sauce, artichoke hearts stuffed with lamb and pine nuts, eggplant drizzled with cilantro and lemon, and kibbeh nayeh — a Lebanese delicacy of raw lamb ground with bulgur, wrapped in pita bread and eaten with mint and raw onion.

After eating, guests are invited to lounge under umbrellas, on pillows and in lawn chairs, and gaze at the snowcapped Mount Hermon looming above Bekaa’s rolling fields.

The story of Tawlet Ammiq is the story of founder Kamal Mouzawak’s efforts to bring together Beirut’s moneyed, urban consumers and the country’s patchwork of small farms.

In 2003, Mouzawak founded Souk el-Tayeb (“delicious market”), the country’s first farmer’s market. “It’s always been about connecting rural to urban,” he explains.

Souk el-Tayeb’s quick rise to popularity led to the market’s expansion from simply selling organic vegetables, honey and spices to also hosting a series of regional food festivals. Mouzawak and his staff enticed food tourists to different corners of the country, to appreciate the grapevines of the north as well as the cherries and figs of Hammana and Kfour. The food festivals seemed to help Lebanese people reconnect with their food’s geographic heritage. Soon Mouzawak was asking himself, “Why can’t we benefit from it in a more regular way, and more easily?”

So in 2009, Souk el-Tayeb launched a restaurant in Beirut called Tawlet, which means “kitchen table” in Arabic. At Tawlet, rotating cooks from surrounding villages and the countryside prepare regional home-cooked meals and serve them buffet-style, with diners sitting at both communal and smaller tables. Small-batch production Lebanese wines, preserves, olive oils, paper crafts and other products found in the weekly farmer’s market can all be purchased from the restaurant’s own boutiques.

Though Lebanese food is revered worldwide, most diners will only ever taste “mezze” — the small, shared dishes such as hummus, baba ghannoush, tabbouleh and labneh that are shared and eaten with bread. These dishes dominate the menus of Lebanese restaurants in Beirut and around the world. But the cooking most Lebanese eat on the average weekday is a more informal and varied experience that centers around a tabkha, meaning a one-pot meal.

Housed in a converted garage in Beirut’s trendy Mar Mikhael neighborhood, Tawlet reintroduced the tabkha to the Lebanese dining scene and pulled back the curtain on traditional family cooking for its foreign visitors.

But Tawlet’s next step — opening a branch in Lebanon’s poor and agricultural Bekaa Valley — was as much a product of serendipity as of planning. While Mouzawak contemplated an expansion, another organization was about to provide him with just the space needed.

In early 2007, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation embarked on a project to build Lebanon’s most ecologically friendly model building in Ammiq, a small town in West Bekaa. When the building — a restaurant space — was completed, SADC sponsored a contest. Tawlet won, and so Mouzawak was handed the keys — free of charge — to Lebanon’s greenest building. In May 2012, Tawlet Ammiq opened its doors to its first customers.

Blending the themes of ecological stewardship with the restaurant’s characteristic banquet-style dining, Tawlet Ammiq invites diners to contemplate where their food comes from and the ways in which development can partner with environmental preservation. Atop its insulating green roof, solar panels generate electricity and heat water, and a breeze-powered ventilation system utilizes lower temperatures underground to cool the building without the use of air conditioners.

Sandwiched between the Shouf Biosphere Reserve and the Ammiq Wetlands Reserve, Tawlet Ammiq also has the rare honor of being surrounded by protected wilderness. Migrating birds traveling between Africa and Asia stop in the area’s swamps and ponds to relax and rehydrate, and the country’s famed cedars dot the hills above the compound. Diners can even arrange, through Tawlet Ammiq, a pre-meal mountain hike or an evening’s guided bird-watching expedition.

And with the restaurant’s recent addition of a three-bedroom guesthouse, adventure foodies will find a trip to Tawlet Ammiq not only delicious but also convenient and comfortable — perfect for exploring the tastes of the Levant.