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3 years ago we declared her the best Italian in the country, since the world turned upside down - Walla! Food

2022-07-07T04:23:28.182Z


3 years after crowning it as the best Italian restaurant in the country, Avi Efrati returns to Tamar Cohen Tzedek's Cochina Hess 4 restaurant, and discovers that not only the world has turned upside down, enter the full review >>


3 years ago we declared it the best Italian in the country, since the world turned upside down

Something in Kochina Hess 4 must change quickly, right now it looks like a place whose joy of life has been taken from

Avi Efrati

07/07/2022

Thursday, 07 July 2022, 07:15 Updated: 07:18

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Anchovy cordonadi in Cochina Hess 4 (Photo: Yael Laor)

I write the following lines with a considerable degree of discomfort.

A visit to Cochina Hess by chef Tamar Cohen Tzedek has always been perceived by me as a kind of banker - a completely safe bet.

Few, if any, places here I have met real Italian food on full;

One made by hand, with no shortcuts, that feels like one made by a real Italian mama in Bologna, Florence or other places in the boot country.

For Cohen Tzedek, in all the stations she passed through, it was always like that.

The home-made pasta was amazing, the ragout was properly from a thousand to a character and the gelato was insanely delicious.

No shortcuts were recorded, the great hand and immense love were present at every bite and everything was delicious-delicious.

This is how it felt when she opened with her ex-partner, Vince Moster, "Vince and Tamar";

Thus when Moster left and the restaurant became "Kochina Tamar", which was run by Cohen Tzedek alone;

And so it is with Cochina Hess - the tiny hut it has been operating in recent years on Hess Street.



This opening is intended to describe the basic shares that Cohen Tzedek must have when it comes to Italian restaurants in Israel.

It is also intended to clarify with some abdominal pain and heart is written the current review.

Before describing the food, it is worthwhile, for those who have not yet visited Cochina Hess, to describe the context.

It's a really tiny place, in the corner of Allenby and Tel Aviv.

In its interior space, a maximum of 18 diners can be seated.

Outside, on the sidewalk, are additional, few tables.

More than you feel like a restaurant there, you feel like you are in a home kitchen.

The kitchen itself, by the way, is probably the smallest in Tel Aviv;

Certainly one of the smallest.

Cohen takes out Tzedek, only three evenings a week, handmade pastas, a few meat and fish dishes and a few desserts - with no attempts at creativity at all.

Everything is very traditional, slow food in every sense.

In many ways this is a kind of ex-territory in the local restaurant scene.

A restaurant that operates three evenings a week is not a place that is there to get its owner rich.

This is a niche restaurant, a nature reserve that comes from love and receives, therefore, a priori sympathy;

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Tamar Cohen Tzedek, a major shareholder in Italian restaurants (Photo: Hila Feller)

So we got to Cochina Hess at a relatively early evening and sat inside.

Immediately you feel at home and a little moaning from the heat and humidity due to an inefficient air conditioner and a door that frequently opens out and does not close.

The menu, on a printed page, is short and to the point: some starters, mini pastas, some mains some of which are also carbohydrate based and a few desserts.

Everything is traditional and devoid of populist and contemporary winks, just like in Mama Italy's home kitchen in the country of origin.

Obviously charming that way.



We started with

anchovy cordoni

(62 shekels) and

tagliatelle ragout

(68 shekels) alongside

a spring salad

(48 shekels).

First came the salad - small, based on lettuce and leaves, with some fruit and a few carvings of Grana Padano on top.

These were not the happiest greens to be found and more than that, the dressing, i.e. the sauce, felt pretty awful: seemingly awfully simple and what could already be;

But when the oil is not impressive to say the least and the little that is mixed with it feels excessive, lacking in touch and not backed by a good hand, can certainly not be good.



The thin and long cordon pasta itself (which seems to be Cohen Tzedek is the only one in the country that prepares like it) was well made.

Quantitatively, it is a tiny ball, about 70 or 90 grams of pasta at most, "prime" (first) as opposed to a main, which is enough for two or three rounds of fork per diner.

The sauce, based on olive oil, parsley, lemon zest and anchovies, did not impress.

Anchovies know how to give saltiness and depth wherever it is present, in pastas and also in meats.

Only that in order to be not only salty but also deep it needs a balance taste balance alongside it.

The pasta we ate was a little salty and a little spicy but hollow somehow.

Nothing really held her back.

The last thing you expect to find in Cochina Hess.

We ate the exact same dish on our last visit here, three years ago.

So this was a perfect dish for anything and everything.

The gap between it and what we got this time is huge.



The number of times I have eaten great ragout at Cohen Tzedek - multidimensional in taste, pleasing to a truly human heart - very many.

The current ragout did not have it.

The word "depth" is repeated and will be repeated in this text.

When it comes to sauces - for pasta, for meat - this is a key dimension.

Well, the ragout also had no depth, nor a sense of crystallized flavor in the dish, which came out quite dull.

And Parmesan did not help him either.

Oops, who could have imagined this was the beginning of this meal.

Pappardella Verde del Mara (Photo: Yael Laor)

But since Cohen's credit was huge, I preferred to see this opening as a kind of coincidence and still look forward to the following:

pappardelle verde del mara

(NIS 115) and

veal scallopini in lemon and sage

(NIS 120).

Like the previous two pastas the green pappardelle was really good.

Like the two sauces, the "mara" component (s) in the dish did not.

The shrimp and calamari did not make a celebration, the sauce barely held them together.

He too was poor.

While it was less problematic than what we encountered in the previous two pastas but much less than it should be and also much less than I remember from the last meal here.

The other main was chunks of slightly sticky scallopini and a lemon sauce with sage and rosemary that was medium and low.

It also lacked dimensions of formation and depth.

The spatula dumplings served as a side dish were well made.



The apple tart

(46 shekels) that we ordered for dessert completely closed the story with the same feeling that accompanied it throughout and maybe even more.

All the pasta doughs were good but here too the dough was problematic.

The apples were too sweet, without a touch of delicacy.

Cohen Tzedek has wondered in the past about desserts.

The memory of her nochiola (hazelnut) ice cream will probably be stored inside me forever.

The apple tart was not even a faint echo of that.



The uniformity of the findings, which lasted throughout, was unambiguous.

It was a meal that left no room for doubt.

I used to eat the best pasta products in Israel at Cochina Hess, by a considerable margin.

What we got was very far away.

Cucina Hess is a niche restaurant.

When it is completely full, it is a maximum of 40 places, both inside and out.

On the one hand, the mains there do not scratch the prices we are used to in restaurants in Tel Aviv, and in general - its prices have hardly changed in recent years.

On the other hand, tiny pastas over 60 shekels are still quite a bit.

Whenever the food was as we had known it before, it was more than justified.

With a base level like the one we were exposed to in the meal described here it is not clear whether even the devout believers of Cohen Tzedek will persevere in their loyalty.

Like one popular and esteemed niche party, which is quite difficult to think about life here without it and which must reset itself if it is a life wish, something in Cochina Hess must change quickly.

At the moment it looks like a place from which the joy of his life has been taken.

Too bad so.



Hess 4, Tel Aviv, 03-5551038

invoice:

Anchovy Cordonti - 62 Tliatella


Rago - 68


Spring Salad - 48


Pepperella Verde del Mara - 115


Scallopini - 120


Apple Tart - 46


Soda - 11


Cocktails - 56


Total: 524

  • Food

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  • Avi Efrati

Tags

  • Restaurant review

  • Avi Efrati

  • Italian restaurant

  • Tamar Cohen-Tzedek

Source: walla

All life articles on 2022-07-07

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