Haidar Karoum - Co-owner-chef of Proof

Chef Haidar Karoum uses techniques at Proof that he learned at Asia Nora.

When Nora Pouillon, owner/chef of Restaurant Nora, sold the building that housed sister restaurant Asia Nora in late November, fans went into their second bout of mourning. The first came when Asia Nora’s chef, Haidar Karoum, left after seven years at the helm.

Karoum had shaped the Asia Nora menu after working for only a little more than a year at Restaurant Nora, where he absorbed Pouillon’s philosophy of cooking only organic produce, grown as locally as possible and always in its proper season.

He had little exposure to the food of Southeast Asia when Pouillon put him in charge of Asia Nora, so he threw himself into its cuisine, poring over cookbooks and experimenting. “I immersed myself in it, taught myself,” he says. “Nora had a lot of faith in me.”

Cooking seasonally, organically and locally was much harder in 1998, when Karoum began at Asia Nora. “There’s a lot more availability now,” he says. “The list of things you can get each week gets bigger and bigger.”

He knows this from planning the menu at his latest venture: Penn Quarter’s Proof, where Karoum moved over the summer. He brought with him the belief that it’s vital to cook with the best products possible, as they become available throughout the year. Now, as before, what’s on his menu “is always what’s in the fields at the time you’re cooking.”

He gets most of his fresh produce from the Tuscarora Organic Growers cooperative that buys from small farmers across Pennsylvania. Ten years from his first connection with them, the choices have grown significantly. “Then, there was one type of cauliflower. Now there are five types,” he says. “There are 16 different heirloom carrots. The market has created a demand for choice. Heirloom tomatoes are more popular than regular.”

Proof is a wine bar as much as a restaurant, and, in keeping with current food fashion, it offers diners the option to pick from a variety of “small plates” as well as large entrées. At the bar, there’s an Enomatic machine that dispenses a wide choice of remarkable wines in prime condition at the press of a button.

Karoum owns Proof jointly with Mark Kuller. The establishment’s name is a nod toward both the measure of alcohol in wine and a stage in the reproduction process of photographs. Images of a series of proofs from the collection at the National Portrait Gallery, which the restaurant faces, rotate on a row of screens above the bar.

A Washington tax lawyer and self-described “food freak,” Kuller wanted to bring together a team from the places he liked to eat. Karoum is passionate about the lineup, enthusing over Sebastian Zutant, former sommelier at Rasika, and the wines he has chosen; the cheese program of fromager Benjamin Turkus; his general manager Michael James, formerly of Teatro Goldoni; and even his fish supplier: “I can’t speak highly enough about our relationship. He gets the very best fish in town. He buys from small fishermen in Sitka, Alaska. The fish you eat here were swimming the day before,” Karoum says.

It’s no surprise that Proof’s diners are people with disposable incomes who love to drink good wine and eat fine foods. “We have a younger clientele than in a number of places,” he observes — “lots of beautiful people.”

Though Karoum calls the cuisine modern American, it has a strong inclination toward the Mediterranean, with purées to go with roasted flatbreads, veal sweetbreads sautéed with Medjool dates, and grilled leg of lamb with panzanella, Italy’s tomato-and-bread salad. He hasn’t abandoned his Asian leanings, though. There is plenty to please those who miss his Asia Nora cooking.

A native of Alexandria, Karoum got his culinary influence more from his Lebanese father than from his Irish mother. His parents, who met in London while in school, kept a house there while he and his brother were growing up. So as a teenager, Karoum traveled in Europe during vacations, picking up broader food experiences. As early as high school he knew he wanted to be a chef. “As a kid I had a passion for food, for anything in the kitchen,” he says. “I was 14 when I knew for sure that that was what I wanted to do.”

He began working in restaurants as part of the Culinary Institute of America associate degree program. Despite the strong experience he gained after graduating from stints at high-end restaurants such as D.C.’s Gerard’s Place, Karoum went back to the school to take a further degree, a bachelor’s in culinary management. “I saw it as a chance to fulfill an obligation,” he says. His parents had said they would support his yearning to go to culinary school if he would agree to take the bachelor’s program as well. With its business management aspect, it would give him broader restaurant career options, they said.

Karoum recently bought a condo unit down the street from Proof. Being so close to work “might have been the biggest mistake of my entire life,” he jokes. But he’s excited about living and working in the area, particularly when stars like Bruce Springsteen show up to play at the Verizon Center just a few steps away, bringing crowds to the restaurant.

In fact, he’s enjoying himself so much at the moment that he can barely tear himself away. He’s looking forward, though, to when he can get his small fishing boat back out on the Chesapeake Bay. “Before the restaurant opened, I went down at least once a week. Just to be on the water makes me feel happy. It’s my moment of ease with myself,” he says.

Proof (202-737-7663; proofdc.com) is located at 775 G St. NW. Main courses cost $21 to $24.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.