Militaryשחף שבתאי

Shahaf Shabtay

Shahaf Shabtay is an Israeli chef who has opened restaurants in Israel and abroad and served as chef of the airline El Al.

born 1975Sa Sa Zu restaurant in PragueChef of El AlAsian and French fusion cooking

Born: 8 June 1975, Ami'ad
Occupation: cook, chef

Shahaf Shabtay was born in 1975 in Ami'ad

Shahaf Shabtay was born on June 8, 1975, and grew up on Kibbutz Ami'ad.

He served in Shayetet 13, the naval commando unit. In 1998, after his service, he went to Paris to study cooking at the Ferrandi school. He then trained in New York and studied baking in the evenings.

He opened a cooking school in Bangkok and later worked as deputy chef at Vak Zuid in Amsterdam from 2002 to 2005. For the same owner he set up branches in Mumbai and Mexico. He returned to Israel in 2005, cooked at East, and in 2006 opened Mina Tomei in Tel Aviv, which closed in late 2008.

As a consulting chef for the Qli group he built restaurants mixing Asian cuisines with French techniques, including Sa Sa Zu in Prague in 2008 and a branch in Rhodes in 2010. He left the Sa Sa Zu partnership in 2015.

He was chef of El Al from 2018 to 2022. In December 2022 he opened MESS in Shanghai, and from 2026 he is head chef of Arkia.