Chef Michael Rafidi's innovative Middle Eastern cuisine has made him a star

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

One of the first things you notice walking into the Washington, D.C., restaurant, Albi, is just how busy the kitchen is. Even at 10 a.m., it is bustling. One cook is grinding lamb meat. Others are carefully chopping vegetables. And a huge wood fire is burning in the back. Chef Michael Rafidi is observing it all.

What's your favorite smell in the kitchen at this time of day?

MICHAEL RAFIDI: Well, it always smells like charcoal in here. But I think charcoal and spices and, you know, the meats and vegetables cooked over the coals, like, when they all, like, the fats start to drip on the coals, that's. Like, one of the better smells.

DETROW: Those smells waft through the kitchen and right into the dining area, a colorful space with tons of natural light, where, by design, you can see everything that's going on in that kitchen.

RAFIDI: Yeah. The kitchen is meant to be in the dining room, so there's really - there's nowhere to hide. It's like we're, like, kind of right on stage.

DETROW: Are those two tables right there so people can sit and watch, like, 2 feet away from the kitchen?

RAFIDI: Yeah. We call those the hearth table. So it's like you get an action right in the kitchen.

DETROW: All of this action, the smells, the food, the breaking down of the barrier between the chefs and the diner, it's all part of Albi's appeal. And it's what made chef Michael Rafidi a star. We visited him because he recently won the James Beard Foundation's National Award for Outstanding Chef, a big deal in the food business.

And when everybody's prepping, what are you looking for in your position? What are you checking in on, or where are your eyes going as...

RAFIDI: My eyes are everywhere all the time. But we have really good chefs that have been with me for a long time. So, like, I really trust what they're doing. But, you know, we're always changing the menu. Like, whatever the farmers are growing, we are putting on the menu no matter, you know, no matter what it is.

DETROW: That constant change makes for experimental dishes. He shows us one.

RAFIDI: We're making kousa mahshi. It's a traditional Palestinian dish, stuffed squash. Traditionally, it's done, you know, you take the squash, and you're coring out the inside until it's like a full cylinder in there. And then traditionally it's stuffed with rice and lamb, but ours is stuffed with Maryland crab, you know, bringing Maryland crab into the Levant is kind of what we're doing.

DETROW: Growing up, Rafidi was surrounded by food. His grandparents shaped his passion for it, especially his grandfather, who was also a chef.

Is there a particular dish that your grandmother or grandfather kind of walked you through and did with you and then - an early on one that...

RAFIDI: This is one here. Yeah.

DETROW: Rafidi points to a bunch of potatoes, some whole, some chopped and carefully arranged in a pan for cooking.

RAFIDI: Batata harra. It translates to spicy potato in Arabic.

DETROW: He shows us how it's made.

RAFIDI: You take a potato, you dock it. And you make a perfect square. We turn it into like a little brick.

DETROW: Then the seasonings.

RAFIDI: Clarified butter, shawarma spice, garlic, paprika. And then they get baked.

DETROW: My technical cooking term is droozling (ph) all that on top of the potato there.

RAFIDI: You could say that. We dredge. We druce (ph).

DETROW: Rafidi says, even at this moment of national recognition, he sometimes still needs some help.

I know you've said in other interviews that you would call your grandmother for advice a lot on cooking.

RAFIDI: Yeah, I still do. Yeah. She lives in Maryland. So we, you know, I'll text her - what - you know, this is missing something. What are we missing here? Add a little more black pepper, a little of this, a little of that. But I think at the end of the day, it's - i'm not here to cook traditional Arabic food verbatim. Like, we're doing our version of it. So it's like, you know, I want it to taste authentic, but I want it to be completely, noticeably different. And, like, that's, you know, Rafidi's food.

DETROW: I wanted to know more about that Rafidi food and what he tries to bring to people's tables, so we sat down in the dining area just outside the kitchen.

RAFIDI: I always knew I wanted to open a restaurant. I never knew it was going to be a Middle Eastern restaurant. I was cooking French and American food most of my career up until, like, 2015, and then really started, like, you know, as I got older, I'm like, I really want to, you know, cook the food of my roots. I really want to, like, showcase the food I grew up with. I want to, you know, make Arabic food in a more fine dining setting and really showcase the ingredients.

DETROW: And that approach has really worked out. Albi was awarded a coveted Michelin Star in 2022. And, of course, there's the recent James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef.

What did it feel like to win that award? What did it mean to you?

RAFIDI: You know, it was incredible. I think - I grew up my whole career looking at James Beard Awards and, like, you know, one day, that would be incredible to be on that stage. And, you know, I wouldn't say that that's why we're doing this. We don't open restaurants and we don't cook for accolades and accomplishments like that. But I think I wanted it, but it wasn't something we were striving for.

DETROW: The James Beard Award wasn't the first big recognition, got a Michelin Star.

RAFIDI: What else? Oh, we got a star? I didn't know.

DETROW: (Laughter).

RAFIDI: No. Yeah. The Michelin Star came a few years ago. That was a pretty incredible time and surprise. We weren't, you know, we weren't opening this restaurant for a Michelin Star. And, you know, the first year we were open, it didn't happen. I was like, all right. Maybe it won't happen. And the second year, it came. So that was a pretty special time.

DETROW: Going back to the James Beard Award, you ended up posting the speech that you had. And you said that you stand on the shoulders of your Palestinian ancestors. Can you tell me a little bit about what you were thinking and what you meant by that?

RAFIDI: Yeah. I mean, well, my grandparents and my - I'm from Palestinian heritage. And I think this whole - I'm here because of them and, you know, highlighting Palestinian food every day. That I'm in here, I kind of reflect on how I got here.

DETROW: Yeah. I think the one line of that speech that jumped out to me was you talked about how food tells stories of love, resilience and hope. And I'm wondering. Has finding love, resilience and hope been harder in the past year or so, given what's happening in Gaza, given the ongoing war?

RAFIDI: Yeah, of course. And it's - how do you cook all this food and, you know, serve people knowing that there's, you know, starvation happening? And, you know, just based off of, you know, the sort of food that I'm cooking, it's just so personal. It's so connected.

DETROW: Why do you think it is that food can tell a story of love, resilience and hope in that kind of way? Like, I'm just thinking about the emotional attachments. Like, you think of food, you think of your grandma, you think of your family beyond it. You think of...

RAFIDI: Yeah. It's just telling a story, you know, telling stories of good moments or just really just, like, stories of histories of maybe people that aren't around anymore. It's really just like, you know, food is going to continue to travel in one way, shape or form through, you know, it doesn't matter if we're eating at this table or in Palestine or anywhere else. You know, we're really just - that same dish is going to get translated, and it's going to be a memory for someone to carry on to someone else.

DETROW: Rafidi also has a bakery, Yellow, as well as a new bar in the works that's set to open later this year. And he's excited by all of that, but he's still always thinking up new dishes for Abi. I asked him if there's one dish he's excited about developing.

RAFIDI: Long story short, there's these larger rice dishes. One's called maqluba. It means upside-down in Arabic. It's one of those dishes that - it's a huge pot of rice and chicken and eggplant. And then we flip it tableside. And it's going to come to the menu one day at Abi.

DETROW: What's been the challenge of getting it just right?

RAFIDI: It needs to be perfect if it's going to go on the menu. And it's just like we haven't nailed it yet. And there's a lot of dishes in the Arab world, and I think we can't do it all in one day.

DETROW: That was James Beard Award winning chef Michael Rafidi. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.