Spending Friday night in Tel-Aviv....in Society Hill

Let me start by saying, Israel has always been somewhere that I've wanted to visit. For years I've watched Anthony Bourdain eat his way through the Middle East, and from a culinary perspective, it's one of the most captivating regions in the world. For a cuisine that is so simple, rarely exceeding 5-6 ingredients per dish, it tells such an amazing story. It tells of the region's political struggles, it's geophysical limitations, its financial hardships, and it's steadfast clutch to religion. As many of you know, the relations between Israel and the rest of it's Middle Eastern counterparts have been far from amicable.There are very few Middle Eastern countries that you can travel to after having been to Israel or vice versa (unless you have multiple passports). While this discord can be attributed to a variety of different things, Israel is a (comparative) beacon of liberalism in perhaps the most conservative part of the world and for that I have much respect!

Enough with the history lesson and on to the PHOOD! After a failed attempt to go to Barbuzzo this past Friday night with my fellow phoodie phriend Lauren, I was able to make reservations at Zahav. With Chef Michael Solomov coming off of the James Beard 2011 "Best Chef Mid-Atlantic" Award and the restaurant getting a nod from the New York Post as being worthy of any New Yorker's attention (high praise coming from such a self-absorbed city), Zahav has to do little to fill the 100-seat dining room every night. When Lauren and I were seated at the table, the very friendly waitress made it a point to tell us that Zahav was about MODERN Israeli food. Having only ever had traditional Israeli food, we weren't sure what that meant. Everything on the menu seemed to carry familiar names, so what was modern about it? 

In an effort to pinpoint the modernity of Chef Solomov's food, Lauren and I decided to get the Tay'im tasing menu. For $38 a person, you were given a first course of hummus (of which there were four varieties to choose from), laffa bread, and salatim (tower of various Middle-Eastern salads). The second course allows each diner to choose two "Mezze" which are basically small plates. Third was the larger entree sized portions of which each diner chooses one. Finally, each diner chooses a dessert. In true phoodie style, Lauren and I didn't go in to this blindly. We had both scoured the Yelp! reviews of the restaurant to see what the must-have dishes were. Since not all of the menu stays consistent, we also decided to order dishes that didn't find their way on to Yelp! yet. 

For the first course, we decided to get the Turkish Hummus, which the waitress described as the most different. It was served warm with butter, garlic and lemon. Knowing that we both love garlic, butter and hummus we thought that the combination couldn't disappoint. Damn were we right! It certainly was different from the hummus you get at the grocery store, but in a fantastic way! It was very rich, and with the lemon infusion, it bordered on a dessert more so than an appetizer. We noted this, and dually noted that we didn't care because it was so damn good! A few minutes after we received the hummus, the waitress brought out a tower of salatim. On this wrought iron tower was a selection of 8 Middle Eastern salads. They included beets with tehina, Moroccan-spiced carrots, twice-baked eggplant, israeli salad (cucumbers and tomato), tabouleh, shaved leeks with lemon and olive oil, pickeled turnips, and shaved cabbage with vinegar and spices. The consensus at the table was that the eggplant and carrots were OUTSTANDING, while the rest was slightly underwhelming. When we were seated at the table we were presented with a small dish of pickled vegetables, so placing more pickled veggies on the salatim was a bit much. Don't get me wrong, everything else was very fresh and well presented but did nothing to WOW either one of us. At this point, I was still left asking myself, where is the damn modernity that they spoke of?

For our mezze dishes, we ordered:

• Fried Sweetbreads with a zucchini baba ganoush and corn vinagrette 
• Fried Cauliflower and labaneh with mint, chive, dill and garlic
• Fried Kibbe with veal, corn and hazelnuts
• Crispy Haloumi

Wondering I was, no longer. Each of these dishes are very traditional, but their presentation was very modern. The sweetbreads were lightly battered, golden brown, and placed on a bed of liquified zucchini baba ganoush and roasted corn. The combination was excellent and they were some of best sweetbreads I've ever had. The cauliflower was nothing short amazing, possibly the favorite dish of the evening. It was golden brown and complimented the labaneh concoction perfectly. The haloumi, while not what I'd call crispy, was still delicious. It was served with mustard greens, dates and almonds, all of which provided a different and complementary texture.  The kibbe was also very good and served on top of a hazelnut puree that provided an earthy complement to the sweetness of the corn.

For the Al'Haesh course, also known as the entrees, we ordered:

• Kofte: ground beef and lamb, cumin, peppers and carrots
• Royal Trumpet Mushrooms: Chickpea puree, lamb belly shawarma, allspice

The kofte was presented very much like an Italian meatball, on a bed of red peppers and carrots pureed almost as to appear like a tomato sauce. The "meatballs" were moist, tender, and very flavorful. Growing up in a large Italian family, I couldn't help but get a familiar feeling from this dish. It was a pleasant surprise. When the royal trumpet mushrooms came to the table, I was slightly confused. At all of the Middle Eastern restaurants I've ever been to, shawarma is served as a sandwich, not unlike a doner kebab. This certainly wasn't a sandwich of any sort. It was thin strips of grilled lamb belly on top of sliced trumpet mushrooms and liquified chickpeas. If you aren't a fan of the taste of lamb, steer clear of this dish. The taste is VERY strong in the belly, which was fine with us because we like the flavor, but it isn't for everyone. Overall the dish was very earthy with the roasted mushrooms, lamb and chickpeas, with nothing to really complement it. The ingredients all provided the same elements to the palate which were all very good, but weren't exciting. 

Finally, dessert was upon us. Lauren and I approached this course very differently. I went with the reviews I had read online and ordered the Halvah Mousse with a chickpea praline and berries. Lauren went with ingredients that were familiar to her and ordered the Poached Rhubarb. The mousse was surprisingly good. It was a bit much after having so much food, but the combination of normally savory ingredients to make a dessert was interesting and well prepared. If you have a sweet tooth, though, look elsewhere as it wasn't a terribly sweet dish. The Poached Rhubarb was served with melon sorbet and a white chocolate nut crunch. Each ingredient was delicious, in and of itself, but when put together, they didn't quite add up. The melon sorbet was immensely flavorful, which would be good if it was served on it's own, but it completely overpowered the much subtler rhubarb and white chocolate. It was, however, much lighter and more refreshing than the mousse.

Beverages would probably be my only serious concern with Zahav. It's not that they were bad, but we had decided to share a bottle of wine and with the least expensive bottle being roughly $50, that wasn't a cheap proposition. The food is an incredible value especially when ordering the tasting menu, but when ordering wine, that value all but disappears. The bottle we ordered was $52, and while there were other options that were a few dollars cheaper, this was the cheapest of the Israeli wines and we thought for a few dollars, it was necessary to fully engulf ourselves in the culinary culture of the country. It was a fantastic bottle, but definitely not worth what it cost. 

So now I know what Modern Israeli food is. It's not so much about the food itself, but how it is presented. Based on ingredients alone, the food at Zahav could certainly be found anywhere in the country of Israel, but the modern presentations make them more unique. Prior to this dinner, Barbuzzo was my favorite restaurant in Philadelphia, and I can confidently say that hasn't changed. Zahav was a great meal, it really was, and it's definitely in the top 10 restaurants in the city, but I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed when I left. Given the recent accolades received by both chef and restaurant, I feel like it  didn't quite meet my expectations. I would still, without hesitation, recommend this restaurant to anyone, especially because the cuisine is so different from that of the the other top restaurants in the city, but forgive me if you leave wanting something more than what you got. I know that I did.