02-04-2025
This kosher restaurant in a North Miami strip mall might be the best Israeli spot in town
From the outside, the modest strip mall in North Miami resembles a thousand others around town, with a long parking lot, a couple of restaurants and numerous small businesses. There's a fish market and a hair salon as well as a money transfer service, just in case you need cash.
But at this particular set of shops on Northeast 123rd Street, there's also something of a culinary miracle in the making.
The restaurant stirring up this magic is Mutra from Israeli-born chef and owner Raz Shabtai, a veteran of kitchens from Tel Aviv and New York, and discovering its charms is a revelation.
Shabtai, who has worked at such restaurants as Nur, Alenbi, Rafael and Basta in New York, leans on Levantine, Galilean and Baladi (Egyptian) influences in his cooking. Mutra's menu is packed with flavorful dishes that live up to their poetic, expressive names: A fisherman and a farmer walked into a kitchen (Mediterranean-style sashimi). The best thing to happen to you today (burned eggplant, boiled egg, sage butter potatoes, Israeli salad, tahini foam and pita chips). Eat the mountain (tender sous vide chicken breast with baby corn, purple cauliflower, corn polenta cream, broccolini, Galilean succotash, sumac, porcini and wild mushroom jus).
There are many good Israeli restaurants in and around Miami, most recently Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov's Aviv, which opened in March in Miami Beach, as well as the chic Abbale Televivian Kitchen in Aventura and local favorite Motek, which has locations around the county. But Mutra is special. The restaurant, which is kosher, opened in February. Since then Shabtai and his team have been cooking and creating, establishing a space where diners feel relaxed and at home, happy to chat with each other, the chefs and servers at the restaurant's L-shaped counter.
Though there are tables as well — the restaurant seats 60 — eating at that big counter makes you feel part of a community. That sense of home and hospitality is crucial to Mutra, Shabtai says. Home is a place you are taken care of, and that's what he wants to do.
'When you're a kid in Israel, you understand the meaning of food,' he says. 'You come home from traveling, they feed you. You come home from the Army, they will feed you. Shabbat is a festival of food.'
Mutra, which translates to 'rain of blessings,' is named for Shabtai's beloved grandmother, his inspiration and biggest influence. She suffered from diabetes and eventually lost a leg and her sight, but her insistence on feeding her family, friends and neighbors is something that has stuck with Shabtai, 40, even after her death.
'I saw people's reactions when she gave them the food she made,' he says. 'She hosted a lot of people. And they ate that food, and they were happy. I think you get addicted to that feeling.'
Don't be surprised, if you're sitting at the counter, to find Shabtai watching you as you take your first bite. If you don't seem to love what you're eating, he'll ask if everything was OK. If he spots you closing your eyes in ecstasy, well, you have just made his night.
'It's something you cannot explain, how fulfilling that is,' he says, laughing.
Realtor Noa Figari, who runs the operation and business development of Gourmet Hospitality Group, Mutra's parent company, said the whole team's goal is complete diner satisfaction.
'We really do want to see the smile when you put the food in your mouth,' she says. 'We strive to see it touch you in some way. We really want to provide the best experience.'
Though the menu will change frequently, depending on what's available and Shabtai's restless, wild imagination, chances are you're likely to finish everything on your plate. Even basics like chicken liver are transformed by Shabtai's touch, in this case served with silan date honey, shallots, pistachio crumble, cornichon and grilled bread (Shabtai calls it 'Chicken liver dreaming to become foie gras').
Beet 3-way salad offers a surprising riot of tastes, with vegan tzatziki, pickled beets, grilled beets, beet crema, torched clementine, chermoula salsa, arugula, tiny radishes, kalamata powder and candied almonds. Maitake steak — not meat but an earthy mushroom roasted in a brick oven and served over polenta cream — wound up on the menu because customers couldn't stop eating it.
Other main courses include lamb kebab with tahini, roasted red onion, harrisa, Uzbeki apricot salad and a Jerusalem breadstick as well as fresh seafood (depends on what the fishermen bring) and chef's cut steak. You'll even find pasta on the menu, perhaps Galilean-style tortellini stuffed with pumpkin, or a red sauce with lamb that Shabtai has created because of an abundance of, say, tomatoes.
All the menu items are kosher, of course, but this is not a difficulty for Shabtai, who finds himself inspired by the limitations.
'A cook thinks: How can I break the boundaries? How do I turn it into something beautiful when I can't cook it the usual way?' he says. 'Cooking kosher, you need to explore, and you learn a lot.'
The North Miami address draws from Jewish neighborhoods all over northeastern Miami-Dade, Figari says, citing customers from the surrounding neighborhood as well as Surfside, Miami Beach, Aventura and Hollywood. But Mutra draws a non-Jewish clientele as well, even though it's closed Friday and Saturday, traditionally the most popular nights for dining out.
Shabtai welcomes the mix of people.
'It's so fun to see religious and traditional people with non-Jewish people who don't even know what kosher is,' Shabtai says. 'Everyone is welcome here.'
Whoever you may be, the chef wants his food to evoke your best memories, of childhood, of family, of eating the best thing you ever ate and never forgetting it.
'You take a bite of something that reminds you of a specific moment, and it brings back those memories,' he says. 'That's why I say food is holy. It brings back memories. People go to cooking schools, but none of them can teach you the meaning of memory.'
Mutra
Where: 2188 NE 123rd St., North Miami
Hours: 6-10:30 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday; 6-11 p.m. Thursday; closed Friday-Saturday
Reservations: Resy
More information: or 786-860-1213
