Inside the Kitchen: Seven Questions with Chef Charbel Hayek of Laya and Ladyhawk

It’s a very good question, and I feel like when it comes to that kind of question, the answer should be something you don’t mind eating every day, right? It’s gotta be the za’atar man’oushe at Ladyhawk. It’s my signature. I mean, I can’t help myself. Every time I’m at Ladyhawk—like, almost every day—it makes me a bit fat, but it’s worth it.

It’s the food of the poor, technically. It’s a very cheap flatbread, folded together, and we usually eat it for breakfast. It’s a bread that has za’atar. Za’atar is like a wild thyme mixed with sesame, sumac, and extra virgin olive oil. And then you bake it, and then you just enjoy it.

The best way to eat it, and this is how I grew up eating it, is you open it and put some labneh in it, some slices of tomato, mint, cucumber, olives—all this kind of stuff—and you make it like a sandwich. Delicious. It’s aromatic, it’s everything you want for your palate when you eat it, right? Salty, tangy.

I wanted to have this item on the Ladyhawk menu because I wanted it to scream, ‘Yes! This is Chef Charbel’s food,’ but I also wanted to elevate it a bit, so I went the extra mile. I made a dough fermented for 48 hours, and then I got the best za’atar you can ever get, imported from Lebanon. I import Lebanese olive oil, too.

So I’m trying to make it as authentic as I can, and then, once it’s baked, I do toppings of labneh and tomato sauce made from onion, garlic, tomato, pomegranate molasses, or spice. It’s very tangy and delicious. And then the third topping is herb purée made from parsley, mint, and basil, and it looks like the same color of the Lebanese flag—white, red, and green—and it has all the flavors that usually go into za’atar, but in a bread-and-butter kind of dip. Every time I work at Ladyhawk, I have it. I tell the guys, make me one. Sometimes I take one home.

There’s a dish that my mom used to make—and she still makes it once in a while—that I believe was one of the reasons I was attracted to cooking. She used to make it almost every Christmas. It’s a braised leg of lamb. We call it gigot d’agneau in French, and it’s braised with red wine and carrots and apples and shallots and all the goodies around it.

“There is something about reducing red wine—particularly the smell of it—that is so good that till today, I swear to God, every single time I smell it, it takes me back to waking up on Christmas Day, because the whole house smelled like the red wine reduction.

Fine dining is a meal that you have once a month, maximum. It’s something you won’t mind waiting two months to do. I’ll give you an example: when I proposed to my wife, I went to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Dubai, and it was one of the best meals of my life.

I remember it till today. I keep thinking about it. It was so expensive, and whatever you want to call it, but still today, I’m like, it was worth every penny. It’s an experience—you sit, you eat for three hours, and they give you something to take home with you.

I have a couple of openings in the pipeline, but eventually I want to open a restaurant that’s going to be pure fine dining, like a chef’s table. That’s the way to go.

My goal is to create opportunities for the next chefs. I can think about what I want to make better, and I still work in other kitchens. I want to open restaurants with chefs who I see are ready. One chef can only run one restaurant. Sometimes you feel responsible for the people who are good and deserve an opportunity. I don’t want them to go through the same struggles as me. I want to support them. That’s my goal: to open honest restaurants backed by people who deserve this opportunity. I opened Tiya in San Francisco with my brother, who is better than me in some ways. He worked with me for six years. I gave him creative freedom, but we run the business. That’s why we opened Sifr, Swadesi Cafe, and Nadu.

You have to be competitive. You gotta be that guy, and I have it in me. I want to compete with chefs who don’t even know me yet. To love it so much I am addicted to it. That’s the only thing I’m good at.

I believe in this Japanese term Kaizen, that you only have to be good at one thing, and the rest will follow. I just focus on one thing.