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<\/p>\n\n Albi’s open kitchen after a renovation. Photograph by Hawkeye Johnson. <\/p>\n
In a first for a restaurant outside of New York City, Albi just earned a four-star review from the New York Times.<\/p>\n
Chef Michael Rafidi\u2019s detailed-oriented Palestinian fine-dining restaurant in Navy Yard has received plenty of flowers\u2014including the No. 1 spot on Washingtonian\u2019s\u00a0 100 Very Best Restaurants list two years running\u2014but this is a rare distinction. Ligaya Mishan\u2019s\u00a0review of Albi marks only the second time she has given out the Times\u2019s highest honor since she became the newspaper\u2019s food critic last year. It\u2019s the first time the newspaper has ever given four stars to a restaurant outside of the Big Apple since it began running restaurant reviews in 1963. There\u2019s never even been one in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t really sunk in quite yet,\u201d Rafidi tells Washingtonian.<\/p>\n
At Albi, Mishan writes that Rafidi crafts \u201ca wholly realized world\u201d where \u201ceven the familiar is made new\u201d without losing a sense of fun.<\/p>\n
Mishan was impressed by the little things which Rafidi\u2019s kitchen takes seriously: freshly baked sourdough khubz flatbread, kibbe naya with crushed rose petals, and roasted Dead Sea dates coated in ras el hanout-infused ghee. She opens her review with a rapturous description of a tray of warm rose-scented hand towels that servers present between courses.<\/p>\n
Rafidi says the restaurant spotted Mishan when she dined there about a month ago, then heard from the Times for a fact check and a photo shoot.\u00a0He says he appreciates being recognized for quiet attention to detail, something he describes as \u201cour whole ethos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a pretty reserved and quiet person and I love to focus on what we do and the craft,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cWe spend more time on thinking through what we\u2019re doing than promoting what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
With its four stars, Albi joins a rarefied group of Manhattan restaurants. Mishan gave four stars to Yamada for its kaiseki tasting menu in 2025. Besides that, only four other extant restaurants earned four stars from the Times when they were last reviewed, then by former critic Pete Wells: Le Bernardin in 2023, Yoshino in 2022, Eleven Madison Park in 2015, and Jean-Georges in 2014. The Albi review is part of the NYT\u2019s efforts to expand its restaurant criticism coverage nationwide.<\/p>\n
Since it opened in 2020, Albi has continued to impress Washingtonian\u2019s food team. A renovation last year gave Rafidi the chance to refocus the menu and more explicitly delve into his Palestinian heritage. The Maryland-raised chef, who has family roots in Ramallah, also owns Union Market bistro and bar La\u2019 Shukran and the all-day cafe Yellow.<\/p>\n
Rafidi says the review won\u2019t change anything for them. Albi can already one of DC\u2019s more difficult tables to score, and it\u2019s tough to see that changing any time soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plan far in advance at Albi,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s been so much great attention and press, which is incredible, and I really love that and appreciate it. But at the same time, it\u2019s a busy restaurant, so we\u2019ve been reducing our hours of operation a little bit lately and just focusing more on our own culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Staff Writer<\/p>\n
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Albi’s open kitchen after a renovation. Photograph by Hawkeye Johnson. In a first for a restaurant outside of New York City, Albi just earned a four-star review from the New York Times. Chef Michael Rafidi\u2019s detailed-oriented Palestinian fine-dining restaurant in Navy Yard has received plenty of flowers\u2014including the No. 1 spot on Washingtonian\u2019s\u00a0 100 Very<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[332,399,389,400],"class_list":["post-12491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-cuisine","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-cuisine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117277934482419665","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}