But there is a special buzz about Mr. Hage’s establishment, which opened last month. The question often heard around town these days is this: “Oh, that Lebanese restaurant, have you seen it?”

Image With its plush red staircase, outdoor tables overlooking the Tigris River and its V.I.P. room (with an annex for bodyguards), the restaurant has no peer in the city in scale or décor. Credit... Holly Pickett for The New York Times

The Lebanese Club is part Beirut, part Dubai, part Miami lounge circa “Scarface,” without the cocaine. “A classy place,” Mr. Hage says, and though there is a suggestion of maternal praise in his estimation, he is right that the club has no peer in Baghdad, in its scale, ambition or, most certainly, décor.

Red, golds and browns accent the chrome, leather, glass and faux alligator skin on the columns. The marble came from Lebanon, the parquet from Dubai and the furniture from Indonesia. A big-screen television is fastened to two-story windows that open to a triple-decked patio. There, patrons gaze on a view of the Tigris that was once the preserve of the palaces for Saddam Hussein’s wife and brother-in-law.

At night, Mr. Hage mingles among the clubgoers, ever the host.

“I prefer to speak French, myself,” he volunteered.

Mr. Hage, who is Lebanese, proudly so, exudes a somewhat self-conscious panache that celebrates shatara  the Arabic word for cunning and guile with a hint of deception. (An example of shatara once overheard in Beirut: “I’m not going to cheat you,” a landlord told a prospective tenant. “Well, I am going to cheat you, but not a lot.”) He also has a knack for making money wherever he goes, however failed the state may be.