Zahav opened in 2008 in a converted brick building in Old City and spent a decade accumulating awards before winning the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant in the United States in 2019 — the highest honor in American food. Chef Michael Solomonov's cooking is rooted in Israeli cuisine but draws on his own biography: born in Israel, raised in Pittsburgh, trained in the American fine dining tradition. The result is food that feels simultaneously ancient and completely contemporary.
The salatim — small salads served with warm, cloud-soft laffa bread and hummus — arrive first and set the tone: simple ingredients cooked with extraordinary attention. The lamb shoulder, braised for hours and brought to the table to be pulled apart, served with more laffa and a mountain of hummus, is the dish that has defined the restaurant since it opened and the one thing you should not skip. Book weeks in advance, especially for weekends. The prix fixe menu covers the full range of Solomonov's cooking and is worth it; if budget is a concern, the bar does a shorter, cheaper version that includes the salatim and a few dishes from the menu.