flagship
Habib and Minerva Daud in Ezba (Photo: Dror Einav)
At the end of last November, great sadness accompanied the news of the death of Yaacov Hayat, who was behind the Sharabich restaurant in Kfar Rama in the Galilee.
The modest and good restaurant of Hayat, who previously also served as the director of social services at the Ziv Hospital in Safed, was one of the focal points of the pilgrimage to the village of lovers of the collected Galilean wild herbs.
Since it closed last summer, its lack is evident.
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Rama was a pilgrimage site for foodies long before Rabich.
It was Sami Abu Sharqi from Al Asil and the couple Habib and Minerva Daud from Ezba who put Rama on the map.
If Sharavich was a small kiton in the parking lot of a building on one of the main streets of the village, Zeba is a restaurant-restaurant, with two large spaces and a real Galilean Arab atmosphere.
The Daouds have been leading it successfully for over twenty years, with quite a few signature dishes that some would not miss a visit to the restaurant for, if they are in the Galilee.
In the summer before last, they opened Kabacha in Old Jaffa, a sort of extension of Zeba in the center.
It can also be said this way: Zeba has been one of the flagships of Arab-Galilee-Shamic cuisine in Israel for many years.
Stamps the taste buds.
Ezba's table (photo: Dror Einav)
There are distinct flagships from Sambusk, but it definitely reminded me of the Daoud couple's cuisine at its best
We arrived in Zebva in a group of four, during a Galilean trip, happy to order some of the dishes that leave their mark on the taste buds even from our memory since the last visit there.
The cube, the stuffed, the shishbarak, the semolina cake;
We longed for all these, because we remembered how good they were.
We started with hummus (29), eggplant in the oven with raw tahini (35), fathosh salad (35) and cheese sambusk (30).
At Zeba they have Taiba beer, one of our favorites, and we immediately ordered two (24 for a third in a bottle).
The hummus was disappointing.
is very.
A pulp that is not meticulous enough, with a suboptimal texture and without the sense of depth and refinement that hummus produces at its best.
The patusho vegetables were much better than the standard we are used to but too much salt and too much lemon spoiled the feeling of freshness.
A matter of a somewhat rough and very imprecise hand.
The eggplant in the oven was reasonable and nothing more.
Not something that can be talked about in terms of flaws, but also not the artisanal feeling that oils of this type in the right places, our acquaintance Azba for example, know how to make.
Only the cheese sambusk dish, which was really tasty, reminded us of the qualities we know from Zeba.
The saltiness of the excellent cheese, its precise temperature, the dough that was well made;
Tzavah has distinct flagships from Sambusk, but it definitely reminded me of the Daoud couple's cuisine at its best.
Who needs cool?
When you see what's happening in Tel Aviv, you better leave your money here
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Kuba Siniya in Ezba (Photo: Dror Einav)
A good Shishbarak is a song in the heart.
In leaving, they know how to put up one of the best sheshbaraks there is
Meat cube (87), shishbarak (94) and a vegan stuffed dish (78) for the vegetarian diner were the main ones.
Here the business started to look different.
Few, if any, compete with the meaty Kuba Sinaia of Azba.
Between two layers of bulgur puree is a spiced ground meat filling.
It's a huge portion, for two hungry people with capacity, whose successful show belongs to the unstoppable genre.
When it's good, it's nothing less than wonderful.
The dish we received was great, but a little less than the one we have become accustomed to over the years in our many visits to Zeba.
Something about her connected to "almost very good", as opposed to celebrated.
The same applies to the shishbarak, one of the highlights of the Shami-Galilee cuisine. This is also a huge dish: nine thin dough pockets, filled with meat, onion, parsley and spices, cooked in a white based sauce, with mint, garlic and zucchini. A good shishbarak is a song in the heart. They know how to prepare one of the best sheshbaraks out there. Similar to the previous one, this dish was also absolutely good, maybe even very good, but not excellent and certainly less good than the basic level we are used to here. The
vegan stuffed dish, with a pair of zucchini and seven vine leaves, stuffed with rice and spices , was nice, but we have eaten better here in the past as well.
The credit is saved.
The account in the leave (Photo: ShutterStock)
We closed the matter with a small semolina cheese cake (35) which was great and helped us sort out and understand a little better the slightly strange feeling that accompanied the meal.
When food manages to deliver that wow feeling, you feel it immediately.
One bite of this cake was enough to realize that it was wow, just like what we're used to here, not at all like the three main ones that preceded it, which might have been much more okay compared to the average level accepted in restaurants of this type, but on the scale of Zeva it was more "almost", "near" or "on the way to.." and not the thing itself.
We have never had a meal here with "almost" banal starters and mains.
Everything there was always in the form of implicit whippings.
The most "almost" we met from the creative house of the Daoud family was at their Kabbalah, last year, when it was still possible to guess that she would go and show up after the opening.
So it turns out that Zazba, one of the best, stable and genuine Arab-Galilean restaurants in Israel, can also have Arabs that are a little less impressive.
Her cumulative credit has been built up over the years and I am in no rush to draw firm conclusions.
You don't shake a long relationship because of one less good night.
We will also keep the credit to the Daouds as the ones who have been running an excellent restaurant for countless years.
We had much better meals there than the current one, hope there will be in the future.
Zeba, Rama West Junction, Rama Village, 04-9888808
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