Expecting the extra – North (Tzfon) Abraxas

There are few chefs around town which you must check their places. Eyal Shani, Timeout Tel Aviv’s Chef of the year, is definitely one of them. Having few successful places as the Saloon, Hamiznon (the Buffet) and North Abraxas, his performance as a judge in the famous TV show “Master Chef” has given him a lot of publicity. We decided to visit his trendy North Abraxas which is located on the popular crossroads of Nachlat Binyamin & Lilinblum.

North Abraxas

The restaurant is divided to two. The one part is the bar, which is located in front of the open kitchen. If you can, we would suggest sitting there as it is a nice experience watching the cooks in action. The sitting part on the other hand, is quite dull and is used also as an entrance to the adjacent Abraxas club. Note that the dishes on North Abraxas are not arriving on plates but rather on papers, a unique touch, but not quite a “green” one. As appose to that, many of the ingredients of the place are organic, such as the not-so-tasty grape juice (no sodas but Soda water at North Abraxas).

Melting Into Itself - a Whole Mini Cauliflower

As starters we took a classic dish of Shani – a whole mini cauliflower “melts into itself” – and weren’t disappointed. The cauliflower was baked in the oven (probably with some butter) and had a wonderful taste. We also took Beet Carpaccio (not beef…). This time the dish wasn’t as good as expected. The beet was a little tasteless, and only the Crème fraiche that came along with it, managed to save the dish somehow.

Beet Carpaccio

Going through to the entrees we also took one classic of Shani – The Shrimps Pita bread. Though it seems quite weird to combine a street food like Pita bread with Shrimps, the dish is no less than marvelous. Quality Shrimps dressed with tomatoes and hot peppers sauce that drips through the whole fresh Pita bread was simply delicious.

Shrimps Pita Bread

Unfortunately we couldn’t give the same praises to the other dish – a European Seabass Chraime. Though the fish itself was quite good, the very hot tomatoes and peppers sauce was boring and didn’t give the fish the extra taste it needed. In addition, the fish was full of bones which made it quite hard on eating it as the sauce hid the fish.

European Seabass Chraime

Though we heard good things about the desserts, we decided to skip and head home. On the way back we agreed that North Abraxas is not a bad place at all, but it definitely didn’t raise to the expectations we had from Eyal Shani.

The check please (2 people)

Beet Carpaccio – 34 NIS
Cauliflower – 34 NIS
Shrimps in Pita Bread – 68 NIS
European Seabass Chraime – 92 NIS
2 X Soda water – 20 NIS
Organic grape juice – 16 NIS

All in all: 264 NIS

The Cizer-Kobrinsky Scale:

3.5 Forks

Summary:

Food:  Trendy Chef Restaurant
Price:  Medium-Expensive
Location: Nachlat Binyamin & Lilinblum

Contact details: North Abraxas
Address:  Lilinblum 40, Tel Aviv | 03-5166660|
Opening Hours:  Sunday 18:00-04:00 | Monday – Thursday 12:00-04:00 | Friday- Saturday 13:00-04:00
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