Freshen Up

Unassuming as it is delicious, anar (2040 Sixth Avenue) has a new spring menu and a new chef running the kitchen. Chantel Gillis, who spent six years at Terra Plata, joined the team at anar in October and took over executive chef duties this April. Gillis has already made her mark on some updates, including a new breakfast program and some menu tweaks.

Start your morning with some avocado toast and a Middle Eastern twist—seeded multigrain sourdough from Sea Wolf Bakery is slathered with avocado, labneh, oven-dried tomatoes, and za’atar vinaigrette. Other morning options include Ellenos unsweetened yogurt with granola. Customers can choose from coconut and figs or pepitas and dates, and add on fresh fruit or wildflower honey for a nominal fee. Warm ancient grain cereal is also on offer—this toothsome bowl is a gluten-free blend of eight grains, date molasses and topped with fresh bananas, coconut milk, Valrhona chocolate, and crushed almonds.

For more morning healthfulness, consider one of anar’s four signature juices, all made with nutritious, fresh ingredients. The anar is an earthy, wine-colored mixture of red beets, orange, and pomegranate. Green features lacinato kale, cucumber, celery, Fuji apple, and lemon. Refresh is a concoction of carrot, ginger, orange, coconut water, and orange blossom. And the appropriately named yellow no. 5 is a blend of pineapple, sweet pepper, lemon, and rose water. Head to anar Monday through Friday, 8­–11am for the Juice Hours program to get $1 off a juice or Jaipur chai order.

For lunch and beyond, anar has three warm bowls and a few salads dotting its menu. Gillis has updated the uber popular mujadara bowl to feature caramelized onions, pickled cabbage, garlic yogurt, Aleppo-spiced pepitas, and Fresno chili alongside hearty green lentils and brown rice. The bowl is protein packed without relying on meat, plus it’s gluten free. Gillis says customers like to add muhammara, a type of red pepper paste, to this dish, to bring all the flavors together. Another stellar seller is the kale avocado salad—a filling mix of sunflower seed butter, roasted asparagus, shaved fennel, avocado, nigella seeds, yeasted lemon vinaigrette, and naval oranges.

“The food here is so simple. But just because it’s simple, that doesn’t mean it should be pushed to the side. You can make beautiful dishes with simple ingredients, and that’s really exciting,” she says.

Cold treat fans will want to head to anar for a new collaboration between mama restaurant group (mamnoon, mbar, anar, mamnoon street) and Nutty Squirrel, a gelato shop with outposts in Phinney Ridge, Magnolia, and Maple Valley. The partnership, called nutty booza, brings together Nutty Squirrel’s ice cream skills and the Levant flavors of mama restaurant group. Find tastes at all of mama restaurant group locations, but the cold treats are packaged for takeout only at anar and mamnoon street. Current flavors at anar, which are both vegan and processed–sugar-free, include raspberry beet agave sorbet popsicles (fresh raspberry puree, fresh beet juice, lemon juice) and hazelnut with dates (organic dates, pure hazelnut paste, organic coconut nectar).

Perfect timing with Seattle’s sudden wave of spring sunshine.