Naja . 2911 District Ave., Fairfax

Tariq Alaeddin has been an evangelist for toum, the simple whipped Lebanese sauce whose name simply means “garlic,” for most of his life.

When his mom would pick up a rotisserie chicken from Walmart, he’d ask her to drive across town to a Middle Eastern grocery to pick up some toum to go with it.

Toum was also the centerpiece of his earliest restaurant idea. “I wrote my first menu and gave it to my father as a proposal when I was 10 years old,” Alaeddin says. “The concept was called ‘And Toum,’ so I basically wanted to serve my favorite American items and just add garlic sauce as a side.”

Today, Alaeddin will finally open his first real-life restaurant, NAJA , in the former Kirby Club space in Fairfax. Anyone who’s had the creamy Lebanes

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