About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Yalla, 1355 U St., NW.
Chef Marcel Chehaieb, a DC native, is opening a restaurant in a storied U Street space—the former Republic Gardens nightclub..
But with Yalla, the modern Lebanese rooftop spot that debuts Friday, Chahaieb is not so much paying homage to the place where Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway once performed as he is trying to transport diners to a city 6,000 miles away.
The menu at Yalla follows a fairly traditional Lebanese flow: hummus with a selection of toppings, hot and cold mezze, followed by grilled meats and fish, then dessert. But many of the familiar plates are subtly tweaked.
Chehaieb’s take on kibbeh nayeh, a Lebanese tartare dish made with bulgur, swaps beets in for the usual raw minced beef. Tabbouleh is dressed with almond-truffle vinaigrette. Cheese-filled jibneh rolls, a take on a classic Lebanese snack, come with an unusual apricot harissa dip. Hummus is topped with duck confit, and swordfish skewers are grilled alongside octopus with black-lemon puree.
“I want to be modern, and Lebanon is a very modern country,” Chehaieb says. “You might go to five or ten different restaurants there, all of them are going to have the basics like hummus, kibbeh, but then every one is going to have something that’s a little more creative and modern.”
While Chehaieb grew up here, he visited family in Lebanon often. He spent years as a prep cook, barista, and server—including at Lebanese Taverna—before settling into a career on the line at Annabelle, where he was mentored by chef Frank Ruta, and at Maydan, where he got the chance to cook Middle Eastern food in an upscale setting.
Ultimately, he traveled back to Lebanon, where he staged at a series of inventive, chef-driven Beirut restaurants. “What helped me was seeing how somebody within the country makes unique dishes without losing the plot,” Chehaieb says. “One of my biggest inspirations in Lebanon was eating cuisine there that still feels Lebanese, but it has that spark that you’ll find at Michelin places in Europe or America.”
Earlier this year, Chehaieb helped open Enigma, and it was his first experience running a kitchen of his own. The restaurant and cocktail lounge is still open just across the street from Yalla, but Chehaieb is no longer involved.
Yalla is part of a more ambitious project. The four-story building that houses the restaurant—once occupied by the otherworldly nightclub Space—is becoming a “multicultural” multi-concept food space. The basement level is occupied by Casa Kantuta, a Bolivian speakeasy; the ground floor features Offside, a Latin American sports bar; and the second floor will soon house a Moroccan shisha lounge. Yalla, which occupies a partially enclosed rooftop section of the building, has accommodating tables, a program of DJs spinning Middle Eastern-inflected dance music, and cocktails that use Levantine ingredients like arak, dates, and orange-blossom water. The restaurant will turn more clubby as the evening progresses. It will serve a late-night menu until midnight Sunday and Thursday, and 2 AM Friday and Saturday.
“Lebanon is the spot for nightlife in the Middle East, historically,” Chehaieb says. “If you go to any of these nicer restaurants in Lebanon, after a certain hour, microphones come out, there’s music, everybody’s alive.”
