Beirut has occupied a significant space in the Arab literary and social imaginary for reasons including its ambivalent history of prosperity and devastation, its centrality as Lebanon’s capital, and its cultural and religious diversity. Alexandra Chreiteh’s novel Always Coca-cola (2012) adds to the rich corpus of Beirut-centered Lebanese literature. The novel explores the everyday life of three young women: Abeer Ward, a Muslim middle-class college student; Yana, a Romanian who is dating the local manager of the Coca-Cola Company where she works as a model; and Jasmine, a college student and kick-boxer, born to a German mother and Lebanese father. The plot revolves around Yana’s unplanned pregnancy and her boyfriend’s threat to leave her if she proceeds with the pregnancy. The novel’s deceptively simple plot underlies complex themes about what it means to live in a post-war Beirut that continues to recreate itself in an increasingly globalized world. Named after the ubiquitous American drink, the novel’s title is a harbinger of the novel’s engagement with consumerism. Yet, the novel does more than illuminate the reality of a hyper-materialistic Beiruti society. Chreiteh’s novel illustrates Beirut’s competing “realities” and the major discourses articulated in and about the city’s social fabric(s). Analyzing the novel from a framework that combines theories of Orientalism, post/neo-colonialism and globalization, I argue that Chreiteh’s highly satirical text reveals three main discourses that seek to claim and produce the city, namely: an Orientalist discourse that constructs Beirut as a timeless, exotic tourist destination; a local discourse that proclaims Beirut as a traditional Arab society founded on unyielding family and religious values; and a global consumer discourse that brands Beirut as a glamorous city defined by its consumerism and western-imported ideals. Focusing on the food tropes of “milk and honey,” tabbouleh salad, and Coca-Cola, I argue that the text both substantiates and undermines each of these narratives. Invoking Beirut’s complex history, social composition, and geography, the text disavows the exclusionary politics posed by these discourses. Beirut’s ethos of contradiction and subversion rests on the dynamic interaction of competing realities and the narratives that produce and/or articulate them. It is in that ambivalent, contested space that the city defies the imposition of any monolithic identity and continues to both invite and challenge a polyphony of interpretations on what it means to be a Beiruti.