Though he grew up outside Washington, D.C., in Montgomery County, Maryland, Michael Rafidi was enveloped in his Palestinian roots. His mother, grandmother, and grandfather, a professional chef, taught him to cook traditional dishes from their homeland, such as sfeeha (open-faced meat pies), dawali (stuffed grape leaves), and knafeh (syrup-soaked dessert of cheese topped with crunchy pastry threads).
Deciding to pursue a career in kitchens, he studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduating in 2005. As he embarked on his culinary journey, he was looking outward rather than inward. “I was interested in French food, modern European, and modern American,” he says. “I was never interested in putting za’atar on anything I was cooking at restaurants, that was something I only did at home.”
As he was coming up, he spent three formative years at Blue Duck Tavern in Washington, D.C., where his shifts overseeing the wood-burning oven left a deeper impression than he recognized at the time. Ultimately, he made his way to California, to work under Michael Mina. In 2017, after five years, he left. Suddenly, all he could think about was the food of his childhood. “Being away from home—my grandfather had passed away—missing the dishes I grew up eating; it all added up,” says Rafidi. “And I lost my passion for cooking other peoples’ food and food that didn’t have any connection to me.”
Moving back to the capital region, he began developing a modern Levantine restaurant concept built around a live-fire hearth, partly inspired by the now-closed Camino in Oakland, California, and The Dabney in D.C. Over a year and a half, he dug into cookbooks, unearthed old family recipes, and staged half a dozen pop-ups as he refined his vision. Albi, meaning ‘my heart’ in Arabic, made its debut in February 2020.
Despite the pandemic, as of 2025, Albi continues to shine brightly with a Michelin star, while Rafidi has taken home the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef and the RAMMY Award for Chef of the Year from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. In addition, the pioneering chef opened two more Levantine-minded concepts: Yellow, a precisely executed, casual-vibed all-day café, and La’ Shukran, a swish back-alley bar-bistro that goes late.
