A Palestinian Restaurant Tests New York’s Tolerance
Can a cuisine escape the cancel culture raging in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war?
Proudly Palestinian on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Photographer: Bobby Ghosh/Bloomberg
One of my favorite restaurants in New York City is about to open a branch two blocks from my home. This should be doubly exciting for me since my neighborhood, Yorkville, in the far Upper East Side, is something of a black hole in the city’s restaurant scene.
But the imminent arrival of Al Badawi, a high-quality Palestinian eatery on the corner of 89th Street and 2nd Avenue, fills me with a sense of foreboding. Its owners, chef Ayat Masoud and her husband Abdul Elenani, who own several other Palestinian restaurants, find themselves embroiled in the poisonous dispute that has broken out in New York, and across the US, over the Israel-Hamas war.