Leila serves up a no-hype approach to the Mediterranean in the Mile End

Amine Laabi wants you to know that Leila, his new Mile End restaurant, isn't "selling any dreams." It's just good food, good wine, good energy—a straightforward proposition in a city where restaurant openings often come wrapped, and even bogged down, in layers of concept and pretense.

"We just want to be cool," he says, then pauses. "That's our main goal."

"We know the industry and when we go out, it's very important to get back to the basics because when you open a restaurant, you try to do too much. A lot of people do too much, and for us less is better, so we're trying to do it in the right way."

Coming from most chefs, this might sound like false modesty or calculated understatement. But Laabi has already done the influencer thing. With over a million followers across Instagram and TikTok (857K and 479.2K respectively), he spent three years building a content empire, traveling the world for collabs, running a studio for content creation. He could have kept riding that wave straight to LA, linking up with the Benny Blancos and Matty Mathesons of the food world.