By Joe Piette
October 22, 2026

Philadelphia — A group of raucous anti-genocide protesters gathered outside Zionist Chef Mike Solomonov and Polyphony Orchestra’s “A Taste Of Home” event at the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Oct. 9. They protested the attempts by the chef and the orchestra to normalize and culture-wash Israel’s brutal ongoing assault on Palestinian life.

With guitars, drums, horns, noisemakers and whistles, dozens of musicians and artists, elders, children, and workers heard speeches, sang protest songs such as Bella Ciao and Unadikum, and chanted anti-genocide slogans outside the event. The noise caused a disruption for those inside, at a venue that seats 14,000, but had sold less than 200 tickets, according to one Mann Center employee.

The noise demonstration was organized by Boycott CookNSolo, a coalition of local community members and organizations with a mission to expose and confront the CookNSolo Restaurant Group’s material and ideological support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the cultural imperialism and ethnic cleansing inherent in the very concept of “Israeli” cuisine.

Hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush, knafeh and other traditional Palestinian and Arab dishes being relabeled as Israeli is nothing short of Zionist appropriation of Palestinian culinary culture, a form of colonization of Palestinian food alongside control of resources, restriction of freedom of movement and destruction of ancestral agricultural land.

The boycott campaign has become widespread and has had major wins this year, with at least eight of CookNSolo’s Federal Donuts and Goldie restaurants going out of business. Boycott CookNSolo successfully pressured the Ox Coffee restaurant to divest from their business relationship with Solomonov’s K’Far Cafe and sign on to the No Appetite for Apartheid pledge, a commitment to boycott Israeli food products and other goods linked to settler colonialism, while supporting “apartheid‑free” local businesses.

According to Boycott CookNSolo’s press release: “Michael Solomonov participates in normalizing occupation and apartheid through his work as an official culinary ambassador for the State of Israel in partnership with the Israel Ministry of Tourism. Through their restaurant group CookNSolo, Solomonov and his business partner Steve Cook have provided direct support to Israeli lobbyists and pro-Israel politicians in the U.S., as well as the Jewish National Fund and Birthright.

“Solomonov routinely uses the common Zionist trope of describing ‘Israel’ as a unique melting pot of peoples coming together to form a new, harmonious yet brashly innovative culture.”

The statement explains: “Polyphony tours the world to spread a specific image of ‘Israel’ as a tolerant, pluralistic society. Their project pushes the misleading premise that the ‘Israeli-Palestine conflict’ is due to cultural misunderstandings and polarization. They claim they are ‘using the arts to build a common future for Arab and Jewish groups.’ However, this ‘common’ future is built on the ashes of Palestine and does not acknowledge the occupation, apartheid and genocide that are the foundation of the Zionist project and its bloody maintenance.

“Palestine has diverse musical traditions and innovative artists creating groundbreaking work. They are making music and art under apartheid, under bombs, while starving in rubble, while their cultural institutions and museums are destroyed by bulldozers and munitions and while deprived of schools and teachers who held knowledge of deep cultural traditions, many of whom have been murdered or lived shortened and difficult lives because of the occupation and its unceasing violence.

And it stresses: “In light of this ongoing genocide, the ‘Taste of Home’ event, staged just one day after the three-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood and amidst the ongoing genocide being carried out by the Zionist entity across Palestine and Lebanon, is an obscenity.

“CookNSolo operates the Philadelphia restaurants Zahav, Goldie, Laser Wolf, Dizengoff, K’Far, Jaffa Bar, Lilah Events and Federal Donuts and Chicken, which they are franchising, and has published four cookbooks with the HarperCollins imprint Harvest. There are also locations of Jaffa Bar, K’Far, and Laser Wolf in New York City, as well as a Goldie location inside Google’s Hudson Square offices. Also included in the CookNSolo portfolio is ‘Zahav Foods’ hummus now being sold in Whole Foods and Wegmans, and ‘Galia by Zahav’ wine brands.

It concludes with an appeal: “The CookNSolo Boycott Coalition calls on people of conscience to boycott all of these enterprises and products.”

More information can be found at boycottcooknsolo.com/blog.