How Lebanese Taverna's founder made an outsize impact on DC dining

Money was tight when Tanios “Tony” Abi-Najm opened the original Lebanese Taverna in 1979 in a former Greek diner in Arlington, Virginia. The Lebanese immigrant had just shelled out $150,000, via a bank loan, to take over the Athenian Taverna. He and his family had little left to replace the Plexiglass sign out front.

“One day, before we opened, my dad and uncle were standing literally outside right here … and my uncle looks up at the sign, and he goes, ‘Tony, you can save money by just changing half the sign,’” said Mr. Abi-Najm’s son Dany, sitting inside the restaurant created by his father and mother, Marie Abi-Najm.

With that penny-pinching decision, Lebanese Taverna was born. It didn’t matter to the founder that “taverna” is a Greek, not Lebanese, term or that the word has little to no usage inside Lebanon. “We didn’t sit around a table brainstorming what we were going to call it,” Dany said. “It was literally born out of need.”

And Lebanese Taverna it has remained for 47 years — through the rough early days, through the expansions in and around the D.C. area, through a move into the fast-casual market, and now through the founder’s death on April 8. Mr. Abi-Najm died at 94 at a hospital in Byblos, Lebanon, where he had lived in recent years. He had leukemia and lung cancer, his family said.

Mr. Abi-Najm leaves behind one of the most recognizable brand names in Washington-area dining, one that the founder and his family built over several decades, helping to popularize Lebanese cuisine in the region. The Lebanese Taverna Group includes five full-service restaurants, six counter-service operations dubbed LebTav, a Lebanese market and a catering company. The business remains entirely family-owned and last year generated more than $20 million in sales, family members said.

Those kinds of numbers belie the humble beginnings of the chain. Mr. Abi-Najm launched it just three years after he and his wife left East Beirut and moved to the United States, fleeing the Lebanese civil war with five children in tow. Mr. Abi-Najm’s two oldest sons, Dory and Dany, ages 16 and 14, had been drafted into the Christian fraction of the Lebanese army. Both were sent to the front lines. Mr. Abi-Najm, a Maronite Christian, could no longer safely cross into Muslim-dominated West Beirut to work his job as a customs officer.

“The war had pushed us too far,” Mr. Abi-Najm told The Washington Post in a 1993 profile of the family.

In the summer of 1976, at age 44, Mr. Abi-Najm sold everything of value to finance the trip to Arlington, where he would join eight of his siblings who had already immigrated to America. He and his family boarded a cargo ship bound for Cyprus, where they obtained green cards. From there, they flew to the United States with a few suitcases and only $700 in cash. They spoke little to no English.

“It was hard to watch the lights of Beirut dim as we sailed away from the only home we had known,” the family recounted in a self-published book commemorating Lebanese Taverna’s 35th anniversary.

Mr. Abi-Najm was not a trained chef, but he loved food. He had learned to prepare Lebanese staples as a child in Jernaya, a mountain village almost exclusively populated by Maronite Christians. He wanted to turn that passion into a profession, and he got his first chance at Bacchus, a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Washington, where the owner was beginning to add dishes from his native Lebanon. Mr. Abi-Najm and Marie were hired as cooks.

Mr. Abi-Najm liked to claim he introduced Washingtonians to Lebanese cooking through Bacchus, though the restaurant’s owner took exception to that idea. “He brought nothing new,” Usama Jallad once told The Post.

The two men did not always get along. This would be a recurring pattern for Mr. Abi-Najm, say those close to him. He could be difficult and demanding, even stubborn. After two years at Bacchus, Mr. Abi-Najm left to start his own restaurant, but he was initially hesitant to serve Lebanese dishes. For the first six months of Lebanese Taverna’s existence, Mr. Abi-Najm continued to serve the same dishes found at Athenian Tavern, a mix of Greek food, pizzas and submarine sandwiches. He began serving his native cuisine only after a neighbor, who lived above the restaurant, tried the family’s Lebanese home cooking one evening and suggested that Americans would love it.

For years, Mr. Abi-Najm did not rely on distributors to supply his restaurant, a rarity in the industry. He insisted on buying ingredients himself, visiting several supermarkets a day to source the ripest tomatoes and the freshest meats, recalled his daughter Grace Abi-Najm Shea. He had to touch and smell everything personally. Even then, Mr. Abi-Najm was known for tossing finished dishes into the trash if they did not meet his high standards.

The Arlington restaurant became a magnet for Lebanese expats and Middle Eastern dignitaries. Lebanese politicians and Saudi Arabian ambassadors were known to stop by for a meal. The restaurant, Grace said, became a de facto Lebanese embassy in the United States. “We considered ourselves ambassadors,” she said.

When Lebanese Taverna opened a second location in 1990 in the Woodley Park neighborhood of Washington, it attracted a different kind of celebrity: American politicians curious about Lebanese cuisine. Ted Kennedy, George Stephanopoulos and Madeleine Albright all became regulars.

Mr. Abi-Najm had not been interested in opening other locations, worrying it would split up family members who were connected to the Arlington original. He expressed doubts about Dany’s move to expand Lebanese Taverna into Woodley Park with the support of his then-girlfriend (and now wife), Jenifer. Mr. Abi-Najm was certain it would fail.

“I’m like, ‘Dad, no, I’m going to succeed,’” Dany recalled. “I couldn’t wait until the day I opened and finally made some money. I actually brought him a check home to show him” how much the location made.

Tanios Elia Abi-Najm was born in Jernaya on Jan. 26, 1932, though some family members say he may have fudged the date so he could work as a customs officer before he was officially old enough. He married Marie Abi-Aad in 1959.

Mr. Abi-Najm smoked for much of his adult life, quitting only in his early 60s when his first grandchild, Alexander, was born to Dany and Jenifer. Dany told his father that he could no longer smoke in the house because of the newborn. “He got upset, and he went and smoked outside, and then he came in [and] said, ‘Well I’m going to quit smoking,’” Dany recalled. “That day.”

Longing for home, Mr. Abi-Najm returned to Lebanon in his 70s, settling there permanently around 2009. His wife stayed in McLean, Virginia, but the couple remained married. “She did not want to leave her kids and grandkids,” Grace said.

In addition to his wife, survivors include his five children, Dory, Dany, David, Gladys and Grace; two sisters and three brothers; and nine grandchildren.

Although his home in Byblos was out of harm’s way, fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah prevented Mr. Abi-Najm’s family from visiting him as his health declined in recent weeks. The patriarch died without his wife and children around him. They watched his funeral in Lebanon via Facebook Live. Dany gave a eulogy remotely.

“What he built went far beyond a business,” Dany said in his remarks. “He introduced Lebanese food — and Lebanese culture — to so many, from everyday people to leaders at the highest levels. Through him, Lebanon reached far beyond its borders.” Washington Post