The New York Times has awarded its highest rating, four stars, to Albi, a Palestinian restaurant in Washington, D.C., making it the first time in the paper’s history that a restaurant outside New York City has received the top score. The restaurant, run by Palestinian-American chef Michael Rafidi, is now one of only five other restaurants with that distinction. The paper said the choice reflects a broader push to highlight regional and national cuisines, including Arab-Palestinian food, that have not always been centered in American culinary coverage.
Rafidi, who grew up in Maryland and comes from a Ramallah family on both sides, opened Albi in 2020 as a broader Levantine restaurant. After a renovation, it reopened last year with a stronger emphasis on his Palestinian heritage. The dining room features black-and-white kaffiyehs in staff imagery, Palestinian embroidery at the entrance, and small Arabic glossary cards at each table. The tasting menu costs $165.
In June 2024, Rafidi won the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Chef award and dedicated it “to the people of Palestine.” In his acceptance remarks, he said, “We are seeing unspeakable horrors in my homeland,” and accused Israel of using food “as a weapon of war, to starve people and deprive them of their human rights.” He added that the land that sustained his family and millions of others is now in danger and that “we all must oppose this.”
The review was written by New York Times chief food critic Ligaya Mishan, who replaced longtime critic Pete Wells in 2024. Mishan praised Albi as more than a restaurant, describing it as building “an entire world” around the food. She highlighted rose-scented hand towels, dates from the Dead Sea, khubz, two versions of kibbeh nayeh, scallops with butter and arak, spiced sfihah, a za’atar croissant filled with labneh, and maqluba cooked in crab stock. The wine list spans 31 pages, includes wines from the West Bank and Lebanon, but no Israeli wines, and features a $158 bottle called “Angry Grapes” and a 1970 Château Musar for $650. The website says most meats are halal and adds a 3 percent worker welfare charge instead of a tip.
The choice drew mixed reactions, with some readers calling it overdue recognition and others saying the timing made the praise inseparable from politics. Critics of the Times also pointed to what they see as a broader shift under Mishan, including fewer Israeli restaurants on year-end lists and changes to how Israeli-linked foods and chefs are described.
