In his new memoir, A Seat at the Table , Shallal writes about rising in the restaurant industry, struggling with his Iraqi-immigrant identity, confronting racism, and finding his tribe. He got his start as a teen in an Annandale pizza joint owned by his father, then eventually opened his first hit DC restaurants: Cafe Luna, Skewers, and Mimi’s. Shallal chronicles how he was drawn to political activism, from protesting the Gulf War between restaurant shifts in the early ’90s to convening antiwar activists in his establishments in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

We sat down with Shallal at his Mount Vernon Triangle restaurant to talk about how those early experiences have shaped the last two decades—from his expansion across the region to his outspokenness in the Trump er

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