WHAT'S LIFE WITHOUT A LITTLE MADNESS?

Changing your career can be daunting, but it can also be life-affirming

- IAIN ACKERMAN

It’s more a change of lifestyle than a career shift,” says Cindy Nehme, the co-founder of Bërytï Bistro in Barcelona. “We felt there was more to life than a job and we always had this dream of opening a Lebanese bistro in Barcelona. So when the time came, we took a deep breath and jumped.”

If you’ve ever thought of packing it all in, ditching your job, and running away to another country, take some inspiration from Nehme and her partner in crime, Pamela Syriani. Both quit their jobs in Dubai and Beirut respectively, moved to Barcelona, and opened their own restaurant in June this year. It took the duo two years to bring the project to life after falling in love with the city in 2013. “This has been the most difficult endeavor either of us has gone through,” says Nehme, a former digital director. “A two-year process to submit the required documentation and to wait for a working visa, then to leave everything and everyone you know, leave a very well-remunerating career in its prime, and come to a city where you don’t know anyone, nor speak the language, nor know how to operate a bistro, and be stripped of your ego at the end of the day and have to start from scratch. Yes, that’s frightening, yes that’s extremely courageous and crazy, but what’s life without a little madness?” Prior to the move both had gathered as much culinary and business experience as possible. For Nehme, that meant working closely with restaurateur and entrepreneur Kamal Mouzawak at Souk el Tayeb in Beirut. For Syriani, it meant enrolling at university and acquiring the necessary skills to embark on a Spanish adventure.