The artist and chef joined forces to reinvent a historic building into a restaurant, tea house, nightclub, and shop
They say that home is where the heart is, and for artist Hassan Hajjaj and chef Rose Previte that means sharing enormous platters of food with friends over a massive table, family style. Hajjaj, who lives between London and Morocco, first made his name through dopamine-inducing portraits of people in his community including the likes of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Cardi B., Billie Eilish, and the Wu-Tang Clan. His work is imbued with textiles and products from his Moroccan heritage. Previte, who was born to a Sicilian father and Lebanese mother, is the restaurateur behind Washington, D.C.’s Compass Rose, Kirby Club, Medina, and the Michelin-starred and James Beard Award finalist Maydān.
Hajjaj and Previte share Arab roots and a cross-cultural sensibility, and in partnership with Capital One and The Cultivist, they launched Dar Miami 1446 for Art Basel Miami Beach 2024. The pair transformed the space, a historic Mediterranean Revival building built in 1929, into a combination pop-up restaurant, tea salon serving Hassan’s own brand Jajjah, retail space, and nightclub. Rose served up a menu that included pastries and Turkish delights for the tea service, and for dinner, dishes like hummus, mouneh (pickled vegetables, honey-soaked dates, and fresh herbs), chicken shish taouk, roasted cauliflower with turmeric, tahini, zhug, and za’atar, and lamb tagine. Dar Miami 1446 turned out to be one of the hottest tickets for Miami Art Week, with performances by Simo Lagnawi, who played Gnawa, a traditional Moroccan genre, and Grammy-nominated artists DJ Pee.Wee (Anderson.Paak), Shaboozey, and Kaytranada. Notable guests included the likes of Miami Heat player Jimmy Butler, artists Hugo McCloud, Miles Greenberg, and Nate Lewis, Kimberly Drew, and Caroline Daur.
The pair sat down with Document Journal at Dar Miami 1446 over tea to discuss collaborating on the pop-up space, the concept of home in Arab culture, and how they each got their start.
Hassan Hajjaj: When this project started, I got a call from Joey [Lico of The Cultivist]. There was an idea of this project, and this is the second year they’re choosing an artist. I was in because I realized it’s going to be about music, art and food, things that I love. Before we spoke, this place came up, and as soon as I saw this space and the quirkiness of it, I said to them, This is the space. This gave me the idea of making the project a [version of] home and then around that time, your name came up. I didn’t know who you were, so when we Googled, I knew if I can deliver, well, I knew your food would be the backbone of the project. I was a bit worried as well, trying to do something from my world by making sure it fits in with yours. More importantly, to have it feel right for people to enjoy the night.
Rose Previte: We met on Zoom and yeah, you guys had already started working on the project, so they filled me in. We came for the walk-through in early October, we all walked in and were like, Oh, this is so cool. Then to see your art in the space, it was jaw dropping. As soon as you said, ‘home’ on one of those calls, I was like, Oh, that’s why they called me. I always say my cooking is like grandma food, but always in a very special setting, right? Like Maydān in D.C., which you’ll come to, is really beautiful, but the food’s still traditional. One of the countries that inspired Maydān is Morocco. Even though I think we all pull from the region.
Hassan: Yeah, exactly.
Rose: I always say Maydān goes from Tangier to Tehran and Batumi to Beirut. So if you think about the region, that’s with Maydān’s food, so your concept and your background, tied together so nicely. And I just was really struck by how much you wanted people to be able to come in here today and see the art for free, without a reservation, without a ticket.
Hassan: Totally. You know, when I started the art and the design, I was thinking about the region. When I got introduced to you, it felt complete. Even the design, [I thought about] what do we share in our region—olives, pomegranates, garlic, spices and stuff like that. So really, the design is all kind of inspired from that. I have this tea product, and what you did for the tea room was brilliant. The other thing was that this was supposed to be private, because it’s a private member’s project, and I really wanted to open it up to the public as well.
As a kid, my friends would come to my house and my mum would make food. They always finished their plates, and she would be like, ‘Hassan, give him some more.’
Rose: Does she live in Morocco, or London?
Hassan: I was born in Morocco, grew up then to the age of 13, and then went to London.
Rose: Okay I was curious. In what city?
Hassan: I’m from a city called Larache, which is north of Morocco. It’s a small fishing port. It’s not far from Tangier, so most of my family live in Tangier now. Morocco is known for mint tea. It’s like cappuccinos in Italy. There’s also a lot of seasonal herbs that people drink for different reasons, one for the stomach, one for relaxation. So wherever you go, the first thing is brilliant mint tea. We have more time in Morocco, because it’s a whole of the idea of making it. You let it brew slowly. So there’s a whole ritual of making the tea. And then each region of Morocco would have different tastes.
Rose: The focal point of the collab is the large table— all I wanted was a large table, because it’s this idea of sharing the table with as many people as possible and sharing the food. So we are doing it the way we grew up eating, which is family style, right? As opposed to a lot of fancy dinners where you would get set plates and courses. This is more like, we put a whole dish on the plate. Everyone shares. It comes as it’s ready, in waves.
Hassan: How about you? You grew up in…
Rose: I was born in the States, but in the Detroit-Toledo area, where there’s a huge Middle Eastern community. So I grew up with Lebanese bakeries and food everywhere. It didn’t even occur to me that there were cities in America that didn’t have a huge Middle Eastern population, and then had the bakeries in the stores to support it. When I moved to Washington, D.C. after college, I was kind of shocked. I was like, Where are all the Lebanese things? This is so odd. D.C. is unique in the states in that a lot of the immigrants coming to the US settle in the suburbs now in the last 30, 40, 50 years, probably. So the city doesn’t have a ton of international restaurants like New York. So I kind of just decided to build my own, which is why Maydān exists.
The other piece of that was that because I didn’t grow up in Lebanon, I grew up in a small town in Ohio, and there are really big pockets of immigrants all over the states in small towns that get forgotten, because we always think all the big immigrant populations are in the cities. There was no Internet, there was no Food Network. Nobody knew what tahini was, nobody knew what za’atar was, and my mom was like, ‘So we will teach them, that is going to be our job.’ I’m like, Really? Because I didn’t ask for that job, I didn’t apply for that job. Then I realized, No, this is how we’ll tell people who we are. Food was language to me.
Hassan: How did the restaurants come out?
Rose: I didn’t think I was gonna do a restaurant. I bartended once I got to D.C., I did work in it, but I still didn’t think, Oh, I’m gonna own this restaurant. I went to graduate school. I got a Master’s in public policy, and met my husband who is a journalist. We lived in Moscow over three years, and it kind of derailed the policy stuff, but it was one of those moments in life where the universe was like, You are not on the right track. We took the Trans Siberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok and my husband did a series of stories about it for his company, National Public Radio. On that train is where I kind of had my epiphany moment. It was my Eat, Pray, Love moment, where I said, You love hospitality, you love feeding people. Why could it not be your actual life? And I didn’t work while I was in Russia, and so I decided to just change course, and then I opened Compass Rose 10 years ago.
You didn’t tell me how you became an artist!
Hassan: [My dad and mum] didn’t read and write. [When I was young] my dad decided to go to England for work, to look after the family. So we stayed behind and suddenly it was just my mum, my auntie, my grandma and my three sisters, I was the only boy. We shared the food. My auntie would sew, my mum would cook. My grandma was old school. So then, in 1973 my dad decided to bring us to England. I didn’t speak English, so it was a difficult moment to try to adjust to the new culture, new language. I came in right halfway through secondary school not speaking English, [so] by the time I sat to do exams, I couldn’t do any of them. I came at zero qualifications. Like yourself, I didn’t know what I was. I worked at Woolworth’s, as a gardener, and just nothing came correct. The last job interview I did, I dressed up to go, trying to get a job in the factory to pack up hats, and I had enough money to get a bus there, but I knew I had to walk back home. So I was hoping I’d get the job, to have that happiness to walk back home, but I knew I didn’t get the job. So that walk, like your train, was like, you know, nobody’s gonna do anything for me, so I’ll go and do something for myself.
After that, I became unemployed for about six years. But during the six years, I did lots of underground parties. So this kind of helped me to survive and learn about people and nightlife, promoting and booking bands. After that [in 1984], I opened up a small store called R.A.P, which was like a streetwear store. And that was my new university, because I did art shows there, had a record shop there, and designed for the label. I started taking pictures of friends around me in London, real people from all over the world that later became friends.
Then I met a woman called Rose Issa. She’s from Lebanon as well. She’s Iranian and Lebanese, and she really was the one who took me under her wing and started sharing my work to the art world. So I came with no qualification in the art, and had to also learn as I went along, as I started to do shows to understand this new world. And then you sort of took off from there. As you know, it’s a lot of hard work, lots of passion, so I’d miss all my kids’ birthdays and stuff like that. I got to this point where I’ve been doing good projects. Also I wanted to be an artist, not to just do one thing. That’s my story.
With Dar Miami, it was easiest for a long table and bring people to eat and leave. And when I saw the space, the idea was really to get me into, firstly, really enjoy the food, because it’s the main objective. But the other piece finds many layers that we have back at home, in the contemporary way. So when they come in, it means they don’t just see and leave. They can walk around, find different layers. They can see something Arabic. They can sit on the crate stool. So for me, it was really important to keep people here, like at home. So for me, the idea is for people to not just to come and eat, but to go back with different ideas in their mind and discover something new, from the food to the decoration to the music.
—
If you missed out on Dar Miami 1446, there are still chances to experience Previte and Hajjaj’s worlds. Rose is opening up Maydān Market in Los Angeles this coming spring, and Capital One and The Cultivist is extending their collaboration with Hajjaj through spring 2025 with an exclusive four-night adventure to Marrakech for Capital One cardholders to experience Moroccan food and culture as well as a chance to visit Hassan’s studio.
