A halal duck reaches the Muhājir bench in parts before dinner service: wings and neck for jus, legs for confit rice, breasts for dry-aging and the fire. Zubair Mohajir and Jacob Dela Cruz opened Muhājir in Chicago ’s Lincoln Park in summer 2024, and the Muhājir Lincoln Park restaurant centers wood fire, shared plates, and a menu that moves across culinary cultures in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, with oak wood, olive wood, and coal feeding the hearth at 2630 N Clark St.
Mohajir and Dela Cruz arrive from Coach House, where their previous work focused on tasting menus. At Muhājir, the format shifts from tasting menus to plates for the table. The cooking still asks for time on the tools: dry-aged duck breasts, confit legs folded into rice, branzino deboned before it spends a few days in the refrigerator, halal wagyu beef cheek roasted at high heat and then braised for 14 hours in its own fat.
Mohajir has said, “Wood fire is part of the human story and is rooted in what we do.”
The Muhājir restaurant in Lincoln Park starts at the hearth
The kitchen at Muhājir works with oak wood, olive wood, and coal, a fuel choice that gives the restaurant its operating grammar. The hearth and oven are central pieces of the room; the cooks build the day around what needs flame, what needs a dry-aging step, what needs a long braise, and what needs the table’s attention in a clay pot.
Mohajir and Dela Cruz have moved from the controlled sequence of tasting menus into a shared-plate format. Coach House served tasting menus. At Muh nājir, the shared-plate menu includes bread, dips, shattas, grilled fish, rice, braised beef, and duck jus. The pass manages heat and pacing for shared plates.
The restaurant’s stated range is Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. A starter of dips and shattas comes with papadam and roasted focaccia. The focaccia carries chermoula and za’atar and is priced at $8. Batata Harra, with aji verde, crispy potato, and manchego, is priced at $14. The menu includes dishes built with condiment, dough, potato, heat, and acid from Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Mohajir and Dela Cruz opened Muhājir in Lincoln Park. Muhājir is a neighborhood restaurant with dinner service, shared plates, and a live-fire kitchen. The cooking uses hours of preparation, butchery, and holding time. Muhājir serves shared plates.
Zubair Mohajir and Jacob Dela Cruz change the service frame
Mohajir is partnering with longtime chef de cuisine Jacob Dela Cruz at Muh nājir. Dela Cruz has worked alongside Mohajir before Muhājir. The pair's previous venture, Coach House, centered tasting menus, and Muh nājir serves shared plates.
Mohajir and Dela Cruz are moving from a tasting menu to a shared-plate restaurant. A tasting menu can control portions, intervals, and the number of bites in a sequence. A shared-plate restaurant has to hold several scales at once. The Woodfire Focaccia has to arrive as a starter. The Duck Numidian Experience, priced at $150, asks the kitchen to manage a full animal’s logic across breast, leg, wing, neck, rice, jus, and achar. The Prime NY Strip, priced at $85, puts another cut into the same fire-led program.
Dela Cruz’s role matters because the restaurant’s best details are procedural. The duck wings and neck cook down for jus. The legs become confit and fold into duck rice. The breasts are dry-aged, then hung over the fire before service, then finished in the oven. A dish built from a 920-year-old recipe still depends on the station cook who knows when the breast has taken enough heat and when the jus has enough body for the table.
The menu moves through spice, grain, hearth, fish, rice, and sauce. The cooks grind and toast cinnamon, black pepper, coriander, cumin, clove, and cardamom for nihari. They make saffron rice dumplings, called faraa, in-house and treat them like pasta with vegetables and cream sauce. The restaurant is built by repeated acts.
Duck Numidian carries the longest memory on the menu
Duck Numidian is tied to a 920-year-old recipe from southern Spain, and the kitchen has been workshopping it for years. The bird is rare halal duck, and the preparation uses the animal in parts: wings and neck for jus, legs for confit duck rice, breasts dry-aged and held for the fire (Eater1).
Live-fire cooking can flatten a dish if the kitchen treats smoke as the point. Mohajir and Dela Cruz do something slower. They give the breast time before it ever reaches flame. They cook the supporting pieces down into jus. They fold the leg meat into rice. The fire enters near service, when the dry-aged breasts hang over the heat and then finish in the oven.
The Duck Numidian Experience is priced at $150 and includes fire-roasted duck breast, confit duck rice, duck jus, and seasonal achar. The achar matters as much as the jus because the dish needs acid against fat and grain. The plate’s structure gives the diner several registers of the same bird: breast as the central cut, rice as the leg’s second life, jus as the bones and trimmings brought forward, achar as a cut through the richness.
The Duck Numidian Experience makes Mohajir and Dela Cruz visible. It requires purchasing choices, butchery, holding space, timing at the hearth, and a service team that can place a multi-part preparation without reducing it to display. It also shows how Mohajir and Dela Cruz use old recipes as working documents, then test them through dry-aging, confit, fire, oven heat, and the table’s appetite for a whole-animal dish.
Branzino, nihari, and faraa show the method beyond the duck
The fish station at Muhājir works with whole branzino before the grill gets involved. The fish are broken down, every bone is removed, and the branzino spends a few days in the refrigerator so the skin crisps when it meets the fire. The finished fish sits on walnut, yogurt, and coriander sauce and receives a relish for acid.
The branzino is deboned first, then held in the refrigerator for a few days so the skin crisps when it is placed over heat. The sauce brings walnut, yogurt, and coriander into the same frame, with the relish doing the work that lemon might do in another kitchen. Cold storage prepares the skin for heat, and the fire rewards the earlier knife work.
Beef Cheek Nihari runs on another clock. The kitchen covers the beef with toasted and ground cinnamon, black pepper, coriander, cumin, clove, and cardamom. The beef roasts at high heat before it braises in its own fat for 14 hours. The same spices go into a jus that the beef cooks in, and the clay pot comes to the table for service.
The beef braises for 14 hours. Muhājir treats richness with spice, then heat, then time. The clay pot contains the result of that schedule. The restaurant pairs fire with long cooking, ground spice, and vessels that carry heat from kitchen to table.
Faraa, the saffron rice dumplings made in-house, brings the program down to the bench. The kitchen treats the dumplings like pasta and serves them with vegetables and cream sauce. Faraa is made, portioned, held, and finished under the same kitchen discipline as the duck and the beef cheek. A dumpling has to be made, portioned, held, and finished. Saffron carries through rice. The sauce has to coat without burying the dumpling’s structure.
The opening details
The menu lists Milk Cake at $14, Prime NY Strip at $85, and the Duck Numidian Experience at $150. Milk Cake with coconut, saffron, and McClurg berries is $14. The larger plates move into a different register, with Prime NY Strip at $85 and the Duck Numidian Experience at $150.
The shared-plate format matters for how the work arrives. The menu includes bread, papadam, dips, and shattas before the larger fire-led dishes. The branzino uses dry-aging and deboning work.
Coach House trained one kind of attention; Muhājir asks for another. Watch the duck program, the fish prep, and the way the hearth organizes service. The Muhājir Lincoln Park restaurant could become a durable house style for the chefs, built from flame, long cooking, and the hands that keep returning to the fire.
