Spring is coming – Popina

Popina

The spring of 2013 is probably one of the more exciting times to be a restaurant lover in Tel-Aviv. Restaurants are opening up in such a rate even we cannot follow. One after the other, like mushrooms after the rain, promising restaurants such as Hannoi, Taizu, Tiger Lili open up and give us the great opportunities eating some fabulous food. It is definitely the Asian cuisine that having its renaissance around town. Popina, on the other hand, a brand new Chef restaurant, is trying to give a different, unique experience. Oh and it does.

The setting, inside a beautiful classic old building, is combining well with early 20’s century village-like Neve Tzedek atmosphere with its exposed stone walls and interesting wine cellar. Nevertheless, its setting is probably the only “classic” or “old” around. Popina is a modern chef restaurant, focusing on innovative kitchen full of techniques and presentations. And it seems like they really know what they’re doing.

Shrimp “Burger”

Starters were somewhat Asian, and probably some of the best we ever had. A Shrimp Burger which came inside steamed bun with aioli sauce was a delicate, perfect dish, and was the star of the dinner. Goose spring rolls in steamed rice rolls and demi glaze weren’t any worse actually and kept a cohesive line of fabulous delicacy. Two other starters of Grilled Calamari with Root vegetables as well as Gin and Tonic Tartar made us feel we are having a really unique and original dinner.

Goose Spring Rolls

Grilled Calamari

The two main courses that came after were really exceptional. Braised Veal Check, a dish rarely seen in chef restaurants, was extremely tender and full of deep tastes, while Sea Drum and Scallop Cannelloni did not disappoint at all.

Braised Veal Cheek

Sea Drum

As it seemed the chef sat right by us on the bar, he noticed we are taking pictures. After asking us what we thought about the food, he did promise a surprising dessert. He actually added two desserts for the two we already ordered, and they were all really wonderful. Strawberries soup with tapioca, tiny lemon tarts, steamed mascarpone cake with berry foam and white chocolate with truffle (!) mushrooms ice cream were all amazing, no other word.

Strawberries soup with tapioca

White Chocolate & Truffles Ice Cream

So yes, we did get two free desserts and no, none of these praises are because of that. Popina is a truly unique place, an oasis of original food at a chef level. Yes, it is expensive for the size of the dishes, but sometimes it is just worth it.

Popina

The Check Please (4 people)

Gin & Tonic Tartar – 64 NIS
Grilled Calamari – 56 NIS
Shrimp Burger – 48 NIS
Goose Spring Rolls – 58 NIS
Braised Veal Cheek – 98 NIS
Sea Drum and Scallop Cannelloni – 115 NIS
Alaska – 44 NIS
Lemon Tart – 42 NIS
White Chocolate & Truffles – 0
Steamed Mascarpone Cake – 0
Coke – 12 NIS
Soda Water – 12 NIS
Tonic – 12 NIS
Water – 12 NIS
Coke X2 – 24 NIS

All in all: 585 NIS

Summary:

Food: Chef Restaurant
Price: Expensive
Location: Neve Tzedek

The Cizer-Kobrinsky Scale:

5 Forks

Contact Details: Popina

Address:  3 Achad Ha’am, Tel Aviv | Phone: 035757477
Opening Hours: Daily 18:00-01:00
http://www.rol.co.il/images/sites/popina/menu/english.html

Eat Like an Egyptian – Port Said

Two months ago we met with Yael and Yoni on one of the new trendy places in Tel Aviv (and not in Egypt as the name suggests) – Port Said. The place is somewhere between a restaurant and a bar and it is owned by the famous chef – Eyal Shani.  It took us a while to write the post but it was worth waiting.

Port Said is all about the cool-hipster style with old fashioned Egyptian music like Umm Kulthum played in the background by a gramophone (or something that sounds like it). You cannot book a table at Port Said and it is quite hard to even find their phone number. Once I tracked it down they told me over the phone that if we will arrive until 20:00 we should be able to get a table without a problem. Indeed, we were the last customers that didn’t have to wait for a table. People that came later had to improvise with a bench as a table.

The menu isn’t really divided to firsts and seconds but rather a wide selection of dishes.

Minute Steak

Yoni and Yael started with one of Shani’s famous dishes from the Miznon – the Minute steak and in addition some kind of mash of Soybean. The Minute Steak was quite good but the soybean mash was so awful that we had to ask them to take it back and asked for baked potato with Crème fraîche instead.

Roast beef Carpaccio

After a while of waiting we have also received our dishes – Roast beef Carpaccio &

Bread Salad

. Both of them were delicious. The Carpaccio wasn’t the classic Carpaccio that you can recognize from the typical Tel Aviv’s restaurants; it was seared before it was cut to a thicker level than usual.

Rooster Sandwich

After additional waiting Yael and Yoni got the “Rooster Sandwich” that they ordered in the beginning of our dinner, nevertheless the waiting didn’t kill their passion to the dish and they found it very tasty. I ordered Egg Salad sandwich while we were still short of one baked potato Shahar ordered earlier.

Baked Potato

The Egg Salad was very classic and even reminded me my grandfather’s egg salad that came from Poland and definitely not from Egypt.  The baked potato that appeared in the first act got off (from the kitchen) in the third. Finally we received the potato and it was worth waiting as it felt as it brought right out of the fire. With fresh touch of “Crème fraîche” and a bit of spicy green paper you can feel the Eyal Shani’s touch.

For dessert we took Guava marmalade which was a sweet ending to a very good dinner.

The check pleases (4 People):

2 X Goldstar beer- 47 NIS
5 X Peroni beer – 145 NIS
Minute Steak – 44 NIS
Bread salad – 38 NIS
2 X Baked Potato – 46 NIS
Roast beef Carpaccio – 37 NIS
Rooster Sandwich – 38 NIS
Egg Salad Sandwich – 28 NIS
Guava Marmalade – 28 NIS

All in all 451 NIS

Summary:
Food:  Advanced bar food
Price:  High
Location: Allenby street

The Cizer-Kobrinsky Scale:

3.5 Forks

Contact details: Har Sinai 2, Tel Aviv

Corn Ice Cream

The inspiration to this home-made experiment came from a unique dessert we eat in La Pepita, Barcelona. It have been 3 weeks ago and the dish did not left my mind so although we don’t have ice cream maker I felt that I must try make it myself.

Corn Ice Cream at La Pepita, Barcelona

I have found several recipes and decided to go with this one, from the blog “Taste and Tell”. Since we don’t have an ice cream maker (“no one want to buy a machine for one time test” as Adi says), I tried a combination of these two posts from David Lebovitz and “The Kitchen“.

Corns getting ready to work

The original recipe included  a cup of “half-and-half“. Since there is no “half-and-half” in Israel I decided to go with 15% fat cream.

15% Fat Cream

You need to cut the kernels of the corn and put it in a food processor with the cream.

In the food processor

Process until smooth

Pour through a sieve over a large bowl, reserving liquid and discarding the solids.

The Sieve

The liquid

Add the 2 cups of milk, the sugar, the salt and the egg yolks.

The egg yolks

The egg yolk

The egg yolks in the mixture

Whisk all the ingredients together and pour into a large saucepan.

Whisk all the ingredients

Cook the mixture over medium heat until thick, but do not boil, stirring constantly, about 20 minutes.

Cooking the mixture

Remove from heat. Let cool for about 20 minutes, then cover and transfer to the fridge to completely cool down, preferably overnight.

At this point I tried the “The Kitchen” way for creating the ice cream. But I didn’t had enough ice for the ice bath.

Ice Bath

So I moved to David Lebovitz way and pour the mixture in to a backing dish.

Baking Dish

And put it in the freeze for 45 minutes.

In the freeze

As it starts to freeze near the edges, remove it from the freezer and stir it vigorously with a spatula or whisk. Really beat it up and break up any frozen sections. Return to freezer.

freeze near the edges

Continue to check the mixture every 30 minutes, stirring vigorously as it’s freezing. If you have one, you can use a hand-held mixer for best results, or use a stick-blender or hand-held mixer. After several times this was the result:

Freezing and mixing

And the final results:

Corn Ice Cream and Berries

Scallops and Calamari on a Plancha

This lunch was inspired by Tiv Taam (Ramat HaHayal) seafood counter. We know we wanted some calamari for our lunch but when we saw the scallop on the display we could not resist the temptation.

We have decided to sear the calamari on the plancha and serve it on top of toasted bread, yogurt and spicy tomato salad.

We cut the bread to thick slices and toasted them on a Stripes Pan which is also kind of a plancha.

Bread

The calamari was  seared on the plancha. We seared it in a few rounds of small portions in order to keep the pan hot all the time.

We bought only 4 Scallops and we fried them with a bit of olive oil, coarse sea salt and pepper on a hot pan.

Scallops

When arranging our plates we spreaded the yogurt over the toast bread and placed above a small portion of the tomato salad and calamari. Next to it we served two scallops each with few drops of lemon.

The plate

And the final result:

Lunch

Christmas at Munich

It have been more than three months ago, and it was business not pleasure, but we really enjoyed our stay in the great city of Munich. It was the beginning of December and we arrive just in time to experience the preparation of Christmas celebration.

Munich

We stayed in Unterschlisem, 20 minutes train ride from Munich, as Inbar was on a training at Microsoft office. Unterschlisem is quite boring city so we have found ourselves on the train to Munich every night. The biggest advantage of the hotel we stayed in was that we found out that Bayern Munich players are preparing to their games in our hotel.

Karlplatz to Marienplatz

Between Karlplatz to Marienplatz

Most of our visit, walking and shopping was between these two main plazas.

Augustiner Großgaststätten

Augustiner

Walking between Karlplatz to Marienplatz, we found the Augustiner. Large restaurant, in which you share your table, eat sausages and drink a beer. In general, this sums up the experience in most of (tourist) German restaurants we have visited. We had the Augustiner beer, Bavarian beer that was very nice. http://www.augustiner-restaurant.com/

Augustiner Beer

Viktualienmarkt

Gluhwein

Very cool market, most of it is food (meat), fruits and flowers. We drank there Gluhwein for the first time in our visit. Gluhwein is hot red wine and it seems to be very popular to drink it at this time of the year. Lots of street counters were selling red wine and eggnog and many people stops for a short warming break.

Viktualienmarkt

We also ate a bun filled with piece of meat. For us, eating “Dry” sandwich is quite weird because we are used to rich, full-of-vegetables sandwiches along with some sauce or paste. Nevertheless, we found out that fresh bun, with good meat and a bit of mustered on the side, was quite satisfying.

Fresh bun with good meat

Xmas Market

Christmas decoration

Most of our meals in Munich were on counters located on the street and not in restaurants, as we used to. As I mentioned before, it was December and the streets were full of counters selling food and Christmas decoration. We had some fried potatoes (Pommes Frites), Hot Chestnuts, Banana and strawberry topped with hot chocolate on a skew and many more.

Pommes Frites

Hofbräuhaus

Huge touristic restaurant with impressive history of over a decade homemade beers and Bavarian Bands playing traditional music. We eat nice Shpetzli and very good Schweinshaxe (pork leg). http://www.hofbraeuhaus.de/

Hofbräuhaus Beer

Oliveto

We had a chance to meet in Munich our Mexican friend, Luis. We scheduled a dinner with him and he brought another friend from Australia, whom he met in his hostel.  We had a nice dinner and eat some very good food: Pizza, Fish and Shpetzili again. http://www.restaurant-oliveto.de/

Tollwood Market

Famous Christmas market with lots of food counters, music, drinks and clothes. Unfortunately. We forgot to take the camera that day. http://www.tollwood.de/en/

Nam Giao 31

Nam Giao

We’ve decided to end our journey at the restaurant that is located on the 1^st place in Trip Advisor for Munich. Ambitious, I know but definitely worth it. It is a small, family-run Vietnamese restaurant that cooks their traditional food. Because of its size, one must book a table ahead. Everything we ate there was perfect and very tasty. It was only when we got back to Tel Aviv we found out that the Asian restaurants are now a big hit in town as well. http://www.namgiao31.de/

Nam Giao

Allianz Arena

Allianz Arena

Though we usually write about food, we do want to share some other exciting events. Being at the Alianz Arena is definitely one of them. We had the chance to go to a Bayern Munich game in the Champions League. This was amazing (cold) experience, and we were lucky to be in the crowd when Bayern beat Bate Borisov 4:1. Amazing Stadium, Amazing crowd and Amazing team. Go Bayern!

Bayern Munich

Overall we can say we really enjoyed this business trip. Thanks to my colleagues, Steve and Annkathrin for their recommendations.

Just Us

Coffee Pancakes with Caramelized Bananas

Friday morning treat – Pancakes. We started with this recipe and added espresso (from our Nespress machine) and fried bananas.  The result is in front of you.

The Ingredients

Breaking eggs

The eggs

Mixing

The espresso shot

Beating

Fried Bananas

Pancakes

Final Result

Keeping it Simple – Café Italia

Cafe Italia

There is a common thing between all good Italian restaurants around the world – they are all simple. Italian cuisine hails the products themselves and does not appreciate cumbersomeness and over sophistication. The reason there are really a few good ones is that you can’t hide behind lots of sauces and spices, unlike other kitchens. Many good Italian restaurants are family-run, as the recipes classics and mostly are not pretentious.

Café Italia tries to bring the simplicity of the Italian kitchen into a large and inviting space with a bistro atmosphere, and for the most of the times, it works.

Carpaccio

Take the assorted mushrooms starter for example. You would expect to read this kind of dish description in a coffee place – very simple – But the execution is brilliant. Few kinds of mushrooms in a quality olive oil, garlic and parsley were really enough to create a delicious starter. A shrimp and zucchini starter continued a very clean Italian line of tasty starters. It was rather the Beef Carpaccio that hid behind a blue cheese and walnut that didn’t fit the dish, which was a shame.

Shrimps Zucchini

Simplicity ruled the main courses as well. The Rib Eye Steak was a simple very fine piece of beef. Classic dish of Cream & Mushroom Pappardelle (though has an 80’s name) was, well, simple and gentle and comforting. Two dishes of Spaghettini, one with a tomatoes and (too much) basil and the other black pasta and seafood weren’t bad at all but did not stand out because of the pasta itself. A Pork Ossobuco on the other hand was very special and felt as it was cooked for a night with close eye from an Italian grandma – it was really special.

Tomatoes and Basil Spaghettini

Osso Bucco

Classic courses ruled the desserts as well. Apple tart, gigantic Tiramisu and a special with mascarpone cheese, mango and passion fruit ended a fun, classic dinner.

Vanilla Cookie

The Check Please (10 people)

San Pellegrino – 25 NIS
Water – 24 NIS
Alexander Beer – 28 NIS
Coke X3 – 39 NIS
7UP – 13 NIS
Corkage – 45 NIS
Focaccia X2 – 28 NIS
Shrimps & Zucchini X2 – 96 NIS
Beef Carpaccio X3 – 174 NIS
Fried Artichokes – 36 NIS
Assorted Mushrooms – 46 NIS
Kohlrabi Salad – 44 NIS
Lettuce Salad – 38 NIS
Cream & Mushroom Pappardelle X2 – 112 NIS
Tomatoes Spaghetti – 56 NIS
Black Seafood Spaghetini X2 – 176 NIS
Seabass Fillet – 118 NIS
Pork Ossobuco – 98 NIS
Rib Eye Steak – 140 NIS
Strawberries & Mascarpone – 44 NIS
Vanilla Short Bread – 36 NIS
Tiramisu – 44 NIS
Chocolate Mousse – 36 NIS
Apple Tart X2 – 38 NIS
Vanilla Ice cream – 9 NIS

All in all: 1591 NIS

 

Summary

Food: Italian Bistro
Price: Expensive
Location: Yigal Alon

The Cizer Kobrinsky Scale

4 Forks

 

Contact details: Café Italia

Address: 6 Kreminitzki st. Tel Aviv | Phone: 03512888