La’ Shukran opens with a Middle Eastern take on a French bistro and bar

La’ Shukran. 417 Morse Street, NE.

Chef Michael Rafidi always wanted to make a French bistro. Long before his successful Levantine restaurant Albi and his café Yellow, he cooked French dishes at Michael Mina’s RN74 in San Francisco. The idea evolved into a French bar with Middle Eastern flavors, which evolved into a Middle Eastern bistro and bar with French vibes. Now, it’s all finally coming together at La’ Shukran, one of the most anticipated openings of the year. It will debut Thursday, September 19 at Union Market.

“There is no comparison with Albi or Yellow. “Honestly, there’s really no comparison to anything,” Rafidi says.We’re trying to bring together a lot of different worlds. It’s a bar. It’s a bistro. I really don’t want to call it a restaurant because we want to have that nighttime vibe.” Likewise, the name La’ Shukran, which means “No thanks,” is a bit open-ended: As La’ Shukran’s website describes it, it can be a way to get rid of a persistent vendor in the Arab souk or a respectful way of saying “you’re welcome.”

Rafidi has teamed up with Radovan Jankovic, owner of the recently opened Brazilian bar Cana in Adams Morgan and Mercy Me, a South American-inspired restaurant in the West End. Both worked at Bourbon Steak early in their careers and then at the Spanish restaurant Arroz, where Rafidi was chef and Radovan was a bar consultant.

The concise menu draws on Rafidi’s French training, his Palestinian roots, and flavors and ingredients from across the Levant. It’s meant to be updated daily with limited quantities of certain dishes. Look for several hummus dishes, all served with poppy seed sourdough rather than traditional pita. The hummus that truly epitomizes La’ Shukran is topped with smoked snails in arak butter, while other versions come with crab and tahini or sweet and sour sweetbreads glazed with amba (marinated mango) mustard.

A lamb tartare with bulgur and egg yolk falls somewhere between Lebanese kibbeh nayeh and French steak tartare, and is served with seeded lavash. Soujek (sausage) ravioli are fried and steamed like ravioli and accompanied by mushrooms and candied tomatoes in an urfa-harissa broth. “It’s kind of a version of a classic Armenian or Turkish dish, depending on who you talk to, called manti,” Rafidi says.

A pepper steak is marinated in yogurt like a traditional kebab and flavored with Middle Eastern spices as well as Aleppo and Urfa peppers. It’s served with an onion salad like you’d get with a shawarma plus a pepper sauce, but Rafidi swaps out the smoked feta for blue cheese. If you stay after 10 p.m., the kitchen will also serve 15 to 20 lamb-beef kebab burgers dubbed the Big Jibne, or Big Cheese, on a sesame bun.

While La’ Shakuran will undoubtedly be a dining destination, Rafidi, who was named an Outstanding Chef in this year’s James Beard Awards, wants the kitchen and bar to be on equal footing. “Sometimes it feels more like a restaurant because I’m involved, but I really want it to be more of a bar,” he says. La’ Shukran also has a collection of vintage vinyl records drawn from Egypt, Sudan, Turkey and all over the Arabic-speaking world. The bar will host DJs several times a month.

On the drinks side, Jankovic has dipped his toes into arak, with the anise-flavored spirit featuring heavily on the cocktail menu. “Warda,” which means rose in Arabic, is a cross between a pina colada and a caipirinha, but with rose water and arak. Another arak-based cocktail dubbed “Zanjabeel,” which means ginger, is similar to a penicillin, incorporating Scotch (popular in the Middle East), pineapple, and za’atar.

The rest of the cocktail menu (including the mocktails) incorporates ingredients ranging from sesame to sumac. The Bedouin Coffee cocktail is a particular standout, as Jankovic says it’s inspired by a cardamom-heavy coffee he sipped at a roadside café in the Jordanian desert. Jankovic, who pioneered D.C.’s espresso martini trend in his previous role at Residents Cafe & Bar, uses smoky mezcal to nod to the Bedouin’s wood-fired cooking, along with cold-brew coffee, carob molasses, a French orange liqueur, and a cardamom-infused cream. He says the cocktail pairs particularly well with Rafidi’s foie gras, which is painted with halva butter and served with ras el hanout-spiced beignets and blueberry jam.

Every day, the pastry team, led by Yellow’s Alicia Wang, makes a grand kanafe, a pastry soaked in syrup and crushed pistachios. Try it with coffee, which Rafidi describes as “a mix of Turkish or Arabic coffee and French press.”

The wine list, designed to resemble a 17cm vinyl record, draws from the Arab world as much as possible and generally focuses on natural wines with “a strong preference for indigenous grape varieties”. “We have skin contact bottles from the Lebanon Mountains, as well as a little-known Pinot Rosé and a Riesling blend from the Shenadoah Valley,” says Will Simons, wine director and chief operating officer.One thing that is kind of universal in all the wines we have is that there are no yeasts added. “It’s spontaneous fermentation or very, very, very, very close to it,” Simons explains.

The bar-bistro is located in a long-abandoned building, a meat market, above Yellow, but it’s only accessible through a hidden door in an alley. The 53-seat space, which includes a 13-seat bar, has a retro vibe with fringed lamps, pops of green and yellow, and a hot pink rug made in Morocco. A rooftop terrace overlooking the Union Market area will seat about 40 more. “We wanted a lot of texture and lush color,” Rafidi says. “Why is it pink and green and this and that? I want it to be like, ‘This is weird.’”

Although most of the tables in the dining room are reserved, walk-ins are welcome at the bar and possibly on the terrace. Reservations for the week will be released every Monday. Tables for the opening week were booked within 40 minutes.