26 June 2026
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Chef Raz Shabtai can still remember walking through the busy stalls at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, holding hands with his grandmother amid the chaos of Friday morning as shoppers prepared for the Sabbath. He learned from her how to recognize and select the freshest produce before heading home to watch her prepare the meal. For Chef Raz, that is the essence of “farm-to-table.”
Now that his restaurant, Mutra — appropriately named after his grandmother — has earned its first MICHELIN Star (in May 2026) he credits these early memories with shaping the ethos of his cooking. “When people come to dine at the restaurant, I want them to understand that my grandma is the host, and I'm the chef.
Inside Mutra: The First MICHELIN-Starred Kosher Restaurant
Located in North Miami, Mutra is a contemporary Mediterranean restaurant that features inventive dishes and cooking methods in a strictly kosher kitchen. Having opened in February 2025, it quickly rose to the top of Miami’s culinary scene, earning its Star in less than a year and a half.Chef Raz describes his food as “Jerusalem home cooking” but pulls on a wide range of cultures and influences from around the world, including primarily locally sourced and seasonal ingredients, when building his menu. Exploring the ancient recipes and traditional dishes he grew up with through a modern lens, a meal here tells the story of Chef Raz’s life, encompassing his vision and the personal experiences that shaped him. One such dish is the malfuf, a stuffed cabbage recipe his grandmother made him as a child. In his interpretation, Chef Raz prioritizes simplicity, using local cabbage stuffed with matbucha (a slow-cooked spiced tomato and pepper salad or dip) lamb ragu, Jerusalem raw tahini and fresh herbs.
Mutra’s menu features poetic names for each dish which recall personal moments and memories. Chef Raz shares the story behind one of the signature menu items, the chicken liver, which he calls “Chicken Liver Dreaming To Become Foie Gras.” He says, “My grandma never gave me foie gras. She didn't have the money to buy it. Back then, chicken liver was free in Jerusalem. Nobody wanted to eat it. And she used to make it for me, and it was so good.”
Jerusalem born and bred, Chef Raz grew up working in kitchens, doing everything from washing dishes and bussing tables to bartending and serving. He eventually worked his way up to high-level roles at both kosher and non-kosher restaurants in Israel and New York, including at well-known establishments such as Rafael, HaBasta, Alenbi and others before moving to Miami. However, when it came to determining the culinary direction for Mutra, kosher was the obvious choice.
“I've been very lucky to cook in a lot of non-kosher restaurants as well. It was amazing for me to understand, to learn, to see, to experience, but also felt very empty; my grandmother never fed me non-kosher food,” he says. “My entire story of my life is built on kosher… I knew that [the restaurant] has to be kosher, because this is who I am.”
Part of what makes Mutra unique is its commitment to maintaining a strictly kosher kitchen. While the laws of Kashrut (the rules derived from the Torah pertaining to what foods are permitted and how they must be prepared) are extensive, a few key principles are essential to understanding what kosher means.
First, meat and dairy cannot be cooked or eaten together in the same meal, and a waiting period of several hours is required between consumption. Shellfish is prohibited, as are all fish and seafood that do not possess both fins and scales. Pork is forbidden, and all land animals must have split hooves and chew their cud (cows, sheep and goats are allowed), and all must be slaughtered according to Jewish law, which is in the quickest and most humane way possible, by a trained ritual slaughterer. Consuming blood is also completely forbidden, so all blood must be removed from meat and any other type of food before it is eaten.
Inside a Kosher Kitchen: Tradition, Technique and Creative Problem-Solving
But what does it mean for a restaurant to be kosher? According to Chef Raz, “Every single thing that enters the restaurant is checked, every single ingredient that we use needs to be under the certification of a different kosher company. It doesn't matter if it's coming from Barcelona, Japan or Israel, it has to be certified kosher.”For a fine-dining restaurant, adhering to these standards is no small feat. “A kosher restaurant is the complete antithesis of French cuisine,” says Chef Raz. There's no milk and there is no heavy cream. All the mother sauces and everything that French cuisine uses, kosher is the complete opposite.” He says, “There [are] a lot of beautiful creatures in the ocean but we cannot use 90% of [them] because I'm limited to use only the fish with fins and scales.”
At Mutra, navigating those restrictions has become second nature, forming an integral part of the restaurant’s identity. “No dairy at all — more than that, don’t even say the word ‘dairy’ in a kosher restaurant!,” he jokes.
When more traditional ingredients like sauce made with shellfish are not available to him, Chef Raz explains how he employs techniques like fermentation and pickling in his kitchen to manipulate flavors to achieve the desired result. “For espuma, for example, you need milk and heavy cream, but we know what type of root vegetables to use and how to combine it with xanthan gum and other things to create the [required] volume,” he says. And when a recipe would normally call for butter, he instead uses garlic confit, which “gives that fatness and gives that body.”
The Farm-to-Table Philosophy Behind Mutra’s MICHELIN-Starred Success
In addition to maintaining kosher standards, Mutra also subscribes to a farm-to-table philosophy. According to Chef Raz, “The farmers are actually the hearts of each and every restaurant. The chef is the brain, but at the end of the day, the farmers are the heart.” He emphasizes the importance of sourcing the majority of his ingredients locally — and domestically, when that’s not possible — to maintain the highest standards when it comes to freshness and seasonality.“All of our meat is coming from Nebraska, upstate New York and Texas. In Florida, there is no kosher cattle, so that's why. We build a menu according to what is the most available in the season right now in Florida. Then we change it every three to four months,” he continues.
Despite the highly seasonal menu that changes nightly, there are some signature dishes that never get taken off the menu. One of these is the beet dish. “In my opinion, [this dish] is an art. It's taking us six minutes just to do a plating, which is a lot,” he says. “But this is the definition of a MICHELIN dish. Why? Because we're using only two ingredients. It's a beet and ajo blanco (white gazpacho made from blanched almonds and bread). We're doing a beet sorbet made with pickled beets and roasted beets with beautiful ajo blanco in the center, [as well as] local blossoms, shallots and pine nuts. And it's vegan. The layers of the flavors that you experience are so fun, funky and amazing. To me, it represents how the humble [can come] to be a Mona Lisa.”
While working within the framework of Kashrut poses a unique set of challenges, for Chef Raz, it’s worth it. He shrugs as he repeats the mantra which is pervasive throughout his kitchen and entire philosophy: “food is holy.” He continues, “It's not that we just eat the food to nourish ourselves. We eat the food to feed our soul as well.”
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Header image: Delectable hummus. © Adir Avivi/Mutra
