Michael Solomonov

Current Company

CookNSolo Restaurants — Co-Founder & Chef

The Chef Who Made America Fall in Love with Israeli Food

Michael Solomonov's Zahav — the Hebrew word for gold — opened in Philadelphia in 2008 and over the following decade became one of the most celebrated and influential restaurants in America, winning the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2019 and fundamentally changing how Americans think about Israeli and Middle Eastern cuisine. Before Zahav, Israeli food in the United States was largely limited to falafel shops and hummus platters at Mediterranean restaurants. Solomonov demonstrated that the food traditions of Israel — which draw from the cuisines of the Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Ethiopian, Yemeni, Moroccan, and Palestinian communities that comprise the country's population — constitute a complex, sophisticated, and deeply flavorful culinary tradition worthy of fine-dining treatment.

The restaurant's signature dish, a whole-roasted lamb shoulder served with pomegranate and Turkish coffee spices, became one of the most famous single dishes in American dining — a showstopper that encapsulated Solomonov's ability to translate the bold, aromatic flavors of Middle Eastern cooking into presentations that resonated with the American dining public. But it was the hummus — silky, deeply tahini-rich, and served warm with freshly baked pita — that became Zahav's calling card, inspiring a generation of restaurants and home cooks to rethink a dish that most Americans had experienced only in its supermarket-container form.

Recovery, Resilience, and Building a Restaurant Family

Solomonov has been remarkably open about his struggles with addiction — a candor that has made him a leading voice for mental health awareness in the restaurant industry and has helped destigmatize the substance abuse issues that plague hospitality workers at disproportionate rates. His brother David was killed during his military service in Israel, a loss that triggered a period of drug addiction that nearly ended Solomonov's career and his life. His recovery, which he has discussed publicly in interviews, his books, and his advocacy work, has become an integral part of his identity as a chef and a leader, demonstrating that vulnerability and openness about personal struggles are strengths rather than weaknesses in an industry that has traditionally valorized toughness and stoicism.

The CookNSolo restaurant group that Solomonov co-founded with business partner Steven Cook has grown to include Federal Donuts, Dizengoff, Laser Wolf, and K'Far, each concept exploring a different facet of Israeli and Jewish food culture. Laser Wolf, a rooftop grill restaurant that specializes in the shipudei mangal (mangal skewers) of Israel's grill culture, has expanded beyond Philadelphia to Brooklyn and other cities, becoming one of the fastest-growing restaurant brands in the country. Solomonov's cookbook 'Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking,' co-written with Cook, won the James Beard Award for International Cooking and became one of the bestselling restaurant cookbooks of the decade — a book that functions as both a recipe collection and a cultural education in the food traditions of a country most Americans know only through political headlines.