Wadja

Palestinian Food’s Next Wave | Eater

"A gourmet Palestinian restaurant whose Arabic name means “chaos,” set inside a stone‑walled courtyard beside a cobblestone outdoor market, where the chef sources ingredients daily from nearby butchers, bakeries, and spice shops. Trained in Paris and London before returning to his ancestral hometown, the chef works with time‑honored local products—freekeh, nearby-farmed lamb, and musakhen—and reinterprets them with modern techniques while keeping the dishes’ identities intact. Examples include a reimagined musakhen served as a cold appetizer of chicken liver-and-heart pâté garnished with onion-and-sumac compote on mini taboon flatbreads, freekeh used as a base for cold seasonal salads, and lamb persuaded to be cut as fillets to star in a meticulously planned three-course dinner. The overall approach champions locally sourced and locally made Palestinian products, favoring generous, home-style portions and creative temperature and presentation changes rather than fusion or minimalist plating." - Shira Rubin