Acknowledgments

FROM michael solomonov: I am a product of the fantastic people in my life.

This book would not be possible without Steven Cook. Let me back up a little bit. Zahav and the success of our entire restaurant group would not be possible without Steven Cook. We have been to hell and back together and I am grateful to go through all of it with not only an amazing mentor and partner, but alongside my best friend.

My wife, Mary, deserves an entire book written about how incredible she is. For all the years of putting up with a chef as a spouse, she has never stopped being encouraging and generally wonderful. And her heart becomes seemingly larger with our two boys, David and Lucas, whom we have been blessed with raising.

To Marc, Jeff, and the Vetri family—literal family and the “familia”—I don’t know what would have become of me if it weren’t for the time that I spent at Vetri. In a bizarre way, I feel like cooking was almost secondary to the experience, even though Marc shaped my cooking style. I would like to thank Terence Feury for his mentorship at Striped Bass and his invaluable friendship, for firing me and rehiring me, and for teaching me how to cook.

To my parents for inspiring and continuing to inspire me through absolutely everything. Thank you to Ava, Michael, Rebecca, and Alex and Kelsey Maxwell and Aline Fisher for their unconditional love and support. I would like to thank the Armisteads for allowing me to weasel my way into their incredible family.

A big double-handed high five followed by a hug and a kiss to Dorothy Kalins for producing such an incredible book and assembling the team. Dorothy, creating this book has helped me define the cuisine that we cook at Zahav. To be able to have a clearer perspective on my life’s work after this process is an unexpected gift. Also I want to thank you and Roger Sherman for your friendship.

A big thank-you to Don Morris for creating such a beautiful book and being so incredibly easy to work with. Watching you and Mike collaborate was an absolute privilege. Michael Persico, I hate you for ruining my life by teaching me to surf: Now I don’t want to do anything else. Your photography is mind blowing, and I am proud to call you a friend. It feels like just yesterday we were stuck in a blizzard together. Thank you for all of your hard work. I’m so grateful to our friend and food professional, Joy Manning, for diligently testing and worrying through each and every recipe.

Heartfelt thanks to Rux Martin for believing in this project and being so supportive and trusting. And mastering the ingredients; and cooking the recipes! And a big thank-you to David Black for working so hard to put all of this together. Getting to know you has been a privilege and I look forward to working together in the future.

I would like to throw a shout-out to Sarah Rosenberg, thanks for all of your hard work and friendship and love. Jenny Hatton, Clare Pelino, and James Narog, we are lucky to have worked together. To Erin O’Shea, Felicia D’Ambrosio, Tom Henneman, and Bobby Logue—I thank you for all of your continued support, partnership, and friendship. To Amy Henderson, Yehuda Sichel, Emily Seaman, Dean Hilderbrand, Okan Yaziki, Brian Kane, and Eilon Gigi, you guys are rock stars! I love you and I am honored to be able work with you. I would like to acknowledge the late food historian Gil Marks for his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, and Ron Maiberg for being one of the first people to put a name to Israeli cuisine. And also a big ole thank-you to Sara Corse, Carl Mason, and Wade Hinnant for keeping me sane and always being in my corner.

To the past, present, and future staff of Zahav restaurant, thank you for your tireless dedication to getting the “custies fired up.” You have all literally made my dreams come true.

FROM steven cook: I first met Mike Solomonov at a coffee shop on Fairmount Avenue during the summer of 2005. We had mutual friends (including my wife, Shira) and were cooking in the same city but had never met. We had even lived right next door to each other for a year. True story. At the time Shira arranged this meeting, I was just finishing up my first year as a rookie chef/owner at Marigold Kitchen, a tiny BYOB in West Philly. Although things seemed to be going well on the outside—great reviews, a steady and growing customer base—on the inside, I was struggling. Owning your own restaurant can be a very lonely business.

I’d like to say that I knew instinctively that Mike and I would make a great team, but my head was elsewhere. I thought I was done in the restaurant business and I was looking for someone to replace me in the kitchen. Mike was my exit strategy. What I found instead was a partner, in the truest sense of the word. Ten years and ten restaurant openings later, we’ve shared almost every experience imaginable in this business, good and bad, and I am thankful each day to be able to work with and be inspired by my friend and my brother.

I can only hope that the generosity, warmth, humor, intelligence, and passion that I get to see every day comes across in these pages.

My own cooking career was short, but not without people who made a lasting impact. I am grateful to my first chef, Kiong Banh, for teaching me professionalism and how to be a gentleman in the kitchen, and to Vernon Morales, for setting the bar high every day and challenging me to constantly raise my standards. I must also thank Howard Gellis and Sal Gentile, who hired me right out of school and showed me the ropes of high finance for six years before I bolted for the restaurant business. None of our restaurants would be possible without the education and support they gave me—not just how to crunch numbers, but also how to do business with honor, integrity, and reason, and not for the last dollar.

In the ten years since I’ve been in the business, I’ve had the good fortune to have a number of great partners, especially Erin O’Shea at Percy Street Barbecue and Tom Henneman, Bobby Logue, and Felicia D’Ambrosio at Federal Donuts. And of course, none of this would be possible without the hard work and enthusiasm of all of the Zahav managers and staff, past and present, for making the restaurant (and this book) come alive every night. You are hospitality personified and I am beyond proud to work with you.

This book would not exist without Dorothy Kalins, who had a vision for what it should be even before we could see it. The worst part of being self-employed is not having someone to tell you what to do and when to do it. But Dorothy made sure that was never an issue. Her vision never wavered, and her gentle (yet firm) touch brought this book to life (also, her willingness to schlep props back and forth to Philly during what seemed like a perpetual snowstorm).

The best thing about being your own boss is getting to pick the people you work with. At our restaurants, the number-one criterion is simply that you have to be nice. This book was no different. The dream team of designer Don Morris, photographer Mike Persico, and recipe editor Joy Manning (who, not coincidentally, was the first professional critic to understand what we were trying to do at Zahav when we opened in 2008), made this process fun from beginning to end. I cannot imagine a more gracious, talented, professional, generous, and supportive group of collaborators.

And oh, yes, nice too!

Writing a book is a dream come true for me, and for that I thank Rux Martin for holding her breath and trusting a first-time author with so much on the line. She (and everyone at HMH) took a leap of faith that there could be magic in this book. And thank you to David Black for helping us to find just the right publishing partner. Also at Houghton, big thanks to art director Melissa Lotfy, production editor Jacqueline Beach, and managing editor Marina Padakis. Thanks, too, to copyeditor Deri Reed for saving us from ourselves. Finally I want to thank my family for all of their support, particularly my parents, who always encouraged me, even when their nice Jewish boy abandoned a high-paying Wall Street job to pursue his dream in a restaurant kitchen. And thank you, Dad, for emailing me a link to every blog post that has ever mentioned one of our restaurants.

To my wife, thank you for giving me the courage to put myself out there each day without the fear of failure. Shira was the first person to read the words in this book and, if it is any good, it is undoubtedly much better because of her. And so am I.

photography credits

All photographs by Michael Persico with the exception of family photographs and images from the photographers and sources listed below.

Steven Cook: 24–25, 27, 45, 68, 120, 121, 122, 126 bottom, 197, 320

Michael T. Regan: 10–11, 15, 19, 22, 65, 66, 78, 116–117, 119, 123, 158, 161, 173 right, 194, 196, 234, 264–265, 290–291, 292, 321

Roger Sherman: 141, 160, 235, 236, 267, 334, 335

Karen Shakeridge: 17, 155, 295

Jay S. Simon/The Image Bank/Getty Images: 30

Zhaojiankang/Dreamstime: 31 left

Tonny Anwar/Dreamstime: 31 right

Darko Plohl/Dreamstime: 45 top

Tor Eigeland/Alamy: 50

Mrakhr/Dreamstime: 65 bottom right

Dennis Donohue/Dreamstime: 97

R. Koenig/AGE: 172