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This is not just a recommendation, this is a warning: in this place go * only * for the pizza

Generosity here is rare, the service is very far from Tel Aviv and the menu makes you want everything.

Now let's talk about the food

Tags

• Raffaello

• Haifa

• Restaurants in the north

• Italian food

Avi Efrati

Thursday, 17 June 2021, 06:00 Updated: 07:01

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Pizza Bonsera, Rishon Lezion (Yaniv Granot)

Every new restaurant that opens in Haifa is always defined in the Israeli food media as one that indicates the awakening to life of the dormant city with potential.

In practice, it is not certain that the number of truly worthy restaurants in the city of Carmel exceeds the number of fingers of one hand.

Awakening, apparently, is a relative concept.

To the delicious Instagram page of Walla!

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for all Avi Efrati's food reviews

This time, as part of a family outing to the city, we asked to sample an old restaurant for the benefit of the readers of the section.

The Raffaello Group began operations in 1993 and has three Italian restaurants, all in the north - in Haifa, Ein Shemer and Kiryat Bialik (kosher branch).

Soon, according to its website, a branch will also open in Kiryat Anavim.

All pasta and dough dishes at Raffaello restaurants are handcrafted inside the restaurant.

As someone who has never eaten Raffaello before, a stroll through the site made me quite a bit crave a piece of traditional Italian, unpretentious but quality, with no shortcuts.

Do not learn from mistakes

Eric Kaiser has not landed here yet.

After this meal he's not sure he should

To the full article

Restaurant-restaurant.

Raffaello (Photo: Raffaello)

Raffaello Haifa is located in the center of Castra at the entrance to the city, for those coming from Tel Aviv.

This is a small shopping center, a little strange in design, which at times reminds me of a medical compound in general.

Neither Zohar nor Hadar, to Castra, but Raffaello looks like a customer from a completely different world.

It is well-designed, looks like a restaurant-restaurant, and the service looks, from the beginning and throughout the entire meal, much more attentive and skilled than what we encounter in Tel Aviv restaurants in the post-Corona era.

The Italian menu is classic and usually revolves around carbohydrates - pizzas and pastas, while alongside the pasta section there are also many mains that are also pasta-based.

The only mainstays that are protein-based, unlike carbohydrate, are that of salmon, chicken breast and Dennis.

Tel Aviv flop

On the first visit there were alarms, missiles and a mess here.

It was better than the second time

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The pizza she saved.

Raffaello (Photo: Raffaello)

There were four of us and we went for the first two - mozzarella borata (57 shekels) and arancini (44), with a joint pizza (chipola, 63) to start.

The food arrived. There is considerable effort around the burata. There was bruschetta, roasted tomatoes, kalamata, artichokes, garlic confit, pine nuts, herbs and also a limited balsamic. How sorry we were to find out when we started eating that it was mostly a commotion about nothing. What to do first with Borata? Pass a sharp knife to get excited again and again by the liquid dripping from the white ball. Not only did nothing run off the ball, its taste was far from Borata’s raw qualities at its best. The surrounding ingredients were coarse and violent in taste. A bad limited balsamic, dripping far too much from it, completed a really poor opening dose.

It did not get any better with the Arancini.

Four fried risotto balls filled with mozzarella, manchego and truffles were in the dish, on whipped cream, tomato salsa, kalamata, olive oil and parmesan.

The taste of the cheese filling in Arancini should be abundant, the frying should be without excess oiliness and the additives around should provide complement and balance to this lush and fried flavors.

None of these are noticeable in the dish we received.

What we were happy about was that the pizza - with onions, artichokes, spinach, sun tomatoes and garlic confit, combined with mozzarella and parmesan - was really good, in every parameter.

The dough is neither too thin nor too thick;

The topping is not too crowded and very balanced;

And the baking - everyone was optimal.

We enjoyed this pizza and hoped for a worthy sequel.

Worth the traffic jams

One of the best steaks in Israel

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In the boot country have not heard of it.

Shrimp Gnocchi in Raffaello (Photo: Raffaello)

We got, on the house, a sorbet to refresh the palate between dishes. Culinary, it's a rather old-fashioned custom, but if you add to that the small drink served for the opening, while we waited outside, that's generosity. If the sorbet was less sweet it could have been effective in preparing the palate for later.

We continued with with chestnut and mushroom gnocchi (64), gnocchi shrimp (103), scallopino vino bianco (71) and pappardelle dimenzo (74). What has been said and what will we talk about? Can't remember when I came across so many dishes that all, in a group, shoot so far from the target. If you continue with the jargon of the ranges, it's not that the bullets hit at least something, even if far from the center; No one was close to the board. For a very long time, even in the pre-Corona days, I had never encountered such sucks food.

We ordered two gnocchi-based dishes. In both, a defective texture was found at its base. Imagine cloudy, soft and magical potato dumplings? Now take 180 degrees away. Exactly like that.

A fundamentally damaged texture, almost grainy, was in the gnocchi in both dishes. The mushroom-based one had a creamy sauce with truffle oil, chestnuts and roasted mushrooms. The taste was vulgar, with excess truffle oil leaving no room for mushrooms.

The shrimp-based dish had six, maybe seven, Black Tiger shrimp - the variety that comes frozen and thaws. They were completely viscous, downright of poor quality. The sauce had root vegetables, peas, capers, garlic confit, herbs and parmesan. Shrimp and Parmesan together? In the boot country have not heard of it. In Raffaello yes. With or without Parmesan, this too was a dish that was poorly executed.

The chicken breast in the scallopina portion was marinated in honey and thyme before burning. This did not prevent it from being completely bland at the base of its flavor and also dry to stiff due to over-burning. The array of vegetables around it did not improve the situation in any way.

My pappardelle dimenzo dish was another dismal link in the chain.

The green-and-white pappardelle dough, the one made in Raffaello by hand, was just as dry, arid as that.

The short ribs in beef and tomato stock had a kind of oppressive aftertaste of something pre-cooked and heated too quickly and incorrectly (micro?) And the surrounding was just a big one.

Of the three worst pasta dishes of this round, this was the worst.

Same service, same taste, same speed

It is also possible to eat like this in the mall

To the full article

To the glory of the Kapolsky dynasty.

Nemesis Chocolate in Raffaello (Photo: Raffaello)

We did not build on a quality dessert but ordered Nemesis Chocolate (44) because the mission is binding.

The cake came beautifully decorated, to the glory of the Kapolski dynasty, with mascarpone cream, cocoa meringue, milk chocolate click, hazelnut crumble and a vanilla ball.

It was so sweet and characterless that for a moment there was a rumor that it was a kosher cake.

As part of the general generosity here, and after the opening drink and the intermediate sorbet, we also received another sorbet at the expense of the house.

So what did we have here?

A classic Italian menu arouses desire, restaurant design, skilled and attentive service than we have encountered in the post-Corona era and genuine generosity.

This generosity continues even in the dishes themselves, in which many components are invested.

Raffaello looks, goes and speaks like a classic Italian restaurant of our time, but it lacks, but really, one thing for which people all over the world, Dana promotes, go to restaurants: delicious food.

We swallowed, licked, exploded.

And that's before the meat

A mandatory food station was born in Israel

To the full article

Only one thing is missing.

Raffaello Restaurant (Photo: Raffaello)

Raffaello, Fliman 8, Castra Mall, Haifa

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