Before it opened, Leila in North Park had 7,000 reservations. Seven thousand. I’d bet a sane amount of money this sets some historical record for the city. A good portion of that is because of the unchecked enthusiasm for each new CH Projects fever dream.
The group’s restaurants and bars (such as Born and Raised, Craft & Commerce, and everything in the LaFayette Hotel) are maximalist art projects, details layered on details, speakeasies behind speakeasies. They are ASMR as restaurants.
But another part of the buzz is that Middle Eastern food, despite its several mighty outposts in the city (including Mal Al Sham, Alforon, Khyber Pass, Aladdin, and Balboa International Market), hadn’t been pulled into a limelight near this bright. And Middle Eastern food is ridiculously, explosively ready for it—breads of all kinds (garlicky khubz, manakish za’atar, barbari) in sauces and dips of more kinds (toum, dukkah, zhoug, tarator), towers of meats basting themselves over smoke.
It’s a personal project for CH founder Arsalun Tafazoli, a first-gen Iranian-American who grew up in the era of 9/11 and avoided his heritage until his mom passed. This is his and his team’s wide-ranging exploration of Middle Eastern food culture—a vertigo-inducing nightscape with bridges and waterfalls and ornate tea kettles and textiles galore. The runaway hit of the year.
