Between Miami’s luxury dining scene and glittering high-rises, a small Israeli restaurant quietly made history on Thursday night when it was awarded a Michelin star. Mutra, run by chef Raz Shabtai, is not another flashy venue backed by major investors but an intimate space where the chef cooks from memories of Jerusalem.
Shabtai, born in Jerusalem, serves Middle Eastern cuisine in an open kitchen, using a contemporary culinary language and a farm-to-table approach along with techniques such as fermentation. Rather than trying to reinterpret familiar Middle Eastern staples like hummus, shakshuka or mezze, he brought Jerusalem’s market sensibility into a Michelin-level setting, blending a rough Jerusalem-Lebanese-Levantine edge with fine dining. The restaurant is named after his grandmother, whom he says shaped how he thinks about food and hospitality.
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The announcement moment at Mutra brought chef Raz Shabtai to tears of joy on camera
(Photo: Instagram screenshot)
The restaurant opened just about a year and a half ago in North Miami, far from the tourist-heavy restaurant hubs of Miami Beach. Over the past year, food critics and diners have flagged Mutra as one of the city’s most intriguing restaurants, and the Michelin star now formalizes that reputation. The fact it earned the distinction in under two years is also considered unusual.
Before opening Mutra, Shabtai worked in restaurants in Israel and New York including Raphael, Basta and NUR in New York, opened by chef Meir Adoni. He did not enter the role as a head chef but worked his way through positions including waiter, bartender and dishwasher. When the award was announced, he broke into tears.
For years, kosher food carried a problematic reputation, seen as a niche cuisine constrained by religious rules and struggling to compete in the American fine dining scene. Mutra has broken that barrier, bringing Jerusalem home cooking into one of the most prestigious spaces in global gastronomy. Shabtai positioned it first as a chef-driven restaurant and only second as a kosher one. The star came as a surprise to many in the American culinary industry and ultimately marks an achievement no other kosher restaurant had reached before.
Shabtai joins a growing list of Israeli chefs abroad who hold Michelin stars, including Assaf Granit, Eyal Shani, Gilad Peled, Matan Zaken and Gal BenMoshe.