feel comfortable."
Ina Garten, 'The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook'.
This is my third (but not last) post about Smart Dining in Tel-Aviv. When I started writing this blog, the main idea was sharing my favorite dining places in Tel-Aviv with my friends as well as with the rest of the world.
In past, I used to go very often for lunch or dinner, almost without thinking of my budget. These days, when my funds are pretty low, I'm trying to spend my money in a smart way. Despite this fact, I’m still mentally unprepared to enter
My Top5 list tries to put together both a good quality and affordable price. As to prices, I should warn you that Herbert Samuel is the most expensive place I've written my blog about. Although, guys, I thought it would be unfare to hide such a great dining treasure from you.
Décor: If you want to check that everything has been cooked properly or give some of your personal kitchen tips to the chef of the restaurant (Jonathan Roshfeld), go upstairs and enjoy the 270 degrees view through the glass wall of the steel-huge-almost-priceless-dream kitchen.
At the contrary, if you’re too tired to climb upstairs, then walk downstairs through a well-designed corridor, decorated with abstract cuisine-inspired paintings, which leads you directly to the bathroom. Now after running upstairs and downstairs, let's come back to the main space.
Who said that if you clone the same object 100-200 times, this is not an innovative design anymore? In Herbert Samuel this concept has been successfully reinvented via dozens of wine bottles (having their beauty sleep) arranged in a perfect esthetic order from the floor to the ceiling. I wonder whether a waitress should climb up that “bottles wall”, if a sophisticated guest has ordered a mature wine bottled at the time of Israel’s establishment. The wall along with light-weighted wooden frames, subdividing the restaurant into three different spaces, give the place an aristocratic look emphasized by modern chick.
Budget: Starts from 79NIS (just a main course. Should it be called a business lunch?) or, another option starts from 99NIS (for appetizer and a main course). If you want to win some free bread and a soft drink as a part of your meal, then go there on weekdays.
Food: If you’ve heard a word “fusion” in relation to food, you’ll find it here: Spanish, Asian, French, Italian and Mediterranean. Dish presentations are perfect. Sometimes you don’t even want to touch the piece of art served in your plate.
For those who expect big portions here, go to another restaurant! This is a gourmet restaurant. This is the institution where you need to chew your food slowly, bite by bite, until you feel each and each ingredient and all of them together as J.R. (chefs' abbreviation) meant it, or, alternatively, you can interpret it in your own language. What is for sure, that here you will definitely find a very creative celebration of tastes.
For the starter, I recommend you to get Vitello Tonnato – an Italian dish which is composed of huge (I ‘d even say enormous) capers erotically placed on top of perfectly fresh thin overlapping slices of cold veal surrounded by light and airy tuna-anchovy (or tuna-cream) based sauce. Try it out if you like the ingredients.
For the main course, I suggest you to try the compostion below or a similar dish.
Let’s analyze what we have in the plate: from top to bottom. At the edge of the sculpture you will find a mixture of microscopically chopped sweet red peppers garnished by green leaves. The second layer is composed of the Gray Mullet fillet that exposes its polenta-grilled side. At the third level one discovers plenty of basil shells (or conchiglie) pasta “flowing” in tomato-garlic sauté. And if one decides to dive even deeper into the very bottom of this culinary sea, he will find out a slight touch of fresh pesto sauce.
Unfortunately, the restaurant doesn’t have a sommelier anymore but waiters seem to know enough about served wines. My main dish went well with Pinot Grigio (from Loire valley, France).
Ambience: Black-tied waiters and waitresses but don't be scared. They are still friendly, most of the time. You have a great panorama to the Mediterranean Sea either from the centrally-located huge bar or from a left/write wing table, thus, providing a perfect location for a romantic meal or business lunch.
Site: http://www.herbertsamuel.co.il/
