We spent NIS 620 on this meal (before tip) and forgot about it a minute after it was over

And maybe it's better for him than Aviv Moshe, that we forget this new episode in Popa Hachshara

My father Efrati

09/15/2022

Thursday, September 15, 2022, 00:00 Updated: 00:15

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poppa

The design remains ornate (Photo: Uri Ackerman)

Popa is undoubtedly the most decorated restaurant in Tel Aviv.

It is also probably the restaurant with the most concept changes recorded here a long time ago.

It was opened somewhere between the first and second corona closure under the leadership of Oren Asido, as a prestigious place.

A little less than a year ago, Kiko Moya - a Spanish chef whose restaurant holds two Michelin stars - was called to its flag.

Moya built a menu, the young Lior Cohen had to implement it, the pricing was lowered a little but we didn't quite understand why we deserved to eat in a restaurant whose design and food compete with more vulgar and flashy ones.

So now Poppa has again changed direction and concept.

The experienced chef Aviv Moshe recently entered the kitchen and it became kosher.

Moshe has a record of many years at the Mesa restaurant and later also at Quattro.

In Mesa, he managed to leave his mark on the bedrock of Israeli restaurants, with rich, abundant, extroverted and luxurious food, which perfectly suited the target audience of the place.

In the good days of Moshe Mesa, there were many of them, one could perhaps like or dislike the extroversion of the style, the tendency to sweetness in the food;

But in its genre there was no disputing that it was meticulous and well-made and it also had a few die-hard fans.

So we came to Popa Hachshara, which was recently relaunched, on the third.

Not the same audience, not the same menu, but the exact same design, which combines the gloom of a club with masses of excessive light fixtures and a dark bathroom made up of cubicles of giant, extremely colorful, dolls.

If on my previous visit here it seemed that there were those who came to the place first to take pictures and upload a picture from the toilets and only then to eat, it does not seem that the kosher crowd is excited by the babushkas at all.

The menu tries to be elegant with plenty of oriental-Mediterranean-Moroccan twists (Photo: Amir Menachem)

The menu tries to be elegant with plenty of Oriental-Mediterranean-Moroccan twists, minus the pork, seafood and milk on its derivatives.

There are not many dishes on the menu.

The first ones include three variations on cold fish, beef tartar, foie gras, one salad, and kovna.

Mainly one pasta, two fish dishes and three meat options.

focused.

We hoped it would be good too and went for

(NIS 72) and

(NIS 82) for starters;

And

(NIS 138) and

(NIS 166) as mains.

So we ordered fish and meat for starters and although it is customary to order fish first and then meat, the beef filet tartare actually arrived first.

The beef tartare, which came on half a challah bun, also had a salad from Shweya, roasted almonds, pickled and grated egg yolk, with tahini and gherkin.

We tasted the tartar and raised an eyebrow.

It was surprising.

Aviv Moshe is known to us as a chef of sampled dishes, peacocks and extremely meticulous.

Here was a rather sloppy tartare, not at all balanced in its flavors, with tahini smeared with haphazard care, without culinary logic.

Not only was it not a signature dish, it didn't feel like a chef's dish either.

In the fricassee tataki dish, there was a piece of red tuna that was seared on the outside and completely red on the inside, like a tataki, with an oriental Mediterranean flavor environment: sweet pepper and arisa cream, black pepper cream, kalamata, tomatoes, pickled halpinio, a hard-boiled egg, and fried mashed potato balls.

Here you could already see more of the chef's presence, unlike the previous dish that mentioned Beit's chef.

The abundance of ingredients, the increase in ingredients, somehow reminded me of Mesa in the days of Moses, but there was a sweeping excessive acidity, and instead of a proper tingle, the oriental contact brought coarseness.

Last week

The kebab, the stew and the salads: in the whole state of Israel they don't make it as tasty as here

To the full article

A whole that is smaller than the sum of its parts (Photo: Amir Menachem)

The sea bass dish in yellow curry was not bad.

She was casual.

Two seared fillets, a yellow curry-based sauce, okra and Thai bean toppings with papaya, alongside a leaf salad in a tamarind sauce.

The fish was seared precisely but not of exceptional quality.

The sauce was a basic curry, which combined a degree of sweetness with some spiciness.

Nothing to write home about for our kosher-observant readers.

The same goes for the side dishes. A simple bistro dish; in the terms of a restaurant led by a renowned chef, even simplistic.

The sirloin came on a root cream, with green beans, roasted cherry tomatoes, roasted zucchini and a concentrated stock of balsamic and shallots on the side. Why was this a medium dish or below? First of all Because of the meat. No one expects kosher meat to reach Hudson's quality dialing zone, but kosher meat can be good, even very good. The sirloin we got was below average. We asked for it medium rare and we didn't detect even a drop of blood in it. Excellent meat doesn't need anything, does it? , just basic toppings.Medium meat and below that provides waste.

We did not expect a lot of the desserts, not because of the kosher limit, but because we were gradually exposed during this meal to rather boring food, not of high quality at all.

We ordered

(NIS 53) and received a plate with apricot and mango mousse, almond sable, plum caramelized with zaatar honey, candied almonds and lemon gel.

Sound promising?

Relatively at least.

In practice, this was also a boring dish.

A collection of components, each of which individually is not well made and putting them together creates a whole that is (much) smaller than the sum of its parts.

Aviv Moshe in Popa.

Not a meal we want to remember him by (Photo: Amir Menachem)

The bottom line is grim.

No good dish, not even one "okay" dish and too much food far below average.

Mostly, this meal started, happened and ended without leaving any mark.

This is not a meal I would like to remember for Aviv Moshe.

I have eaten at his place many times, much better.

It seems that if it weren't for the need to write the current checklist on it, it would have been forgotten as soon as it was finished.

So the kosher keepers, a population that suffers from a truly unfortunate lack of proper places, has another restaurant.

In the too limited list of the best restaurants for this market segment - there is no way in the world we will include it.

invoice:

Tataki fricasa - 72

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