Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2011

Michael Solomonov

Until recently, if you craved sophisticated Israeli fare, there was no way to sate your appetite other than to board a plane to the Holy Land or cook it yourself. Michael Solomonov, the chef and co-owner of Zahav restaurant in Philadelphia, is changing that. In 2008, he opened the restaurant to much national acclaim, and this year, he won the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

Solomonov, 33, who previously worked at Vetri, one of Philadelphia’s top restaurants, turned his attention toward Israeli cuisine when he received word that his brother, David, had been killed while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, according to the New York Times. Solomonov left his job and moved to Israel to gain experience cooking in Israeli kitchens and to study the cuisine more closely.

His food at Zahav combines many of Israel’s culinary influences, gathered from its vast immigrant populations from Turkey, Morocco, Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries. He also draws on his own culinary roots for inspiration. Plates like his Braised Beef Cheeks with Chestnuts, Celery and Pumpkin Rice, house-made pita and Chocolate Kataifi dessert would not be out of place at one of Tel Aviv’s top restaurants. However, Solomonov says that by working abroad, in Philly, he is granted more culinary freedom and can blend various influences and flavors instead of focusing on one.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.