James Beard award winning chef Alon Shaya on making a splash in new Orleans—not with Cajun or Creole cooking, but with Israeli food—and on becoming a sweet-tea-loving southerner

Culinary Characters Unlocked

James Beard Award winning chef Alon Shaya, born in Israel and raised in Philadelphia, was cooking for his family at the age of seven. When he began getting into trouble as a teen, his high school home economics teacher intervened, getting him his first fine-dining cooking job when he was just 16. He says she saved his life. He went on the Culinary Institute of America, then cooked in a variety of restaurants, become an executive chef at 21. He won the 2015 James Beard award as Best Chef South for cooking at the Italian restaurant Domenica which he co-owned in New Orleans. The following year his restaurant Shaya, also in New Orleans and offering Israeli food, won the James Beard Award as the country’s best new restaurant. He then moved on to open two more highly popular Israeli restaurants, in New Orleans and Denver, and is now growing his Pomegranate Hospitably group with locations featuring other cuisines as well, including a restaurant in the Bahamas.

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