Nothing was spared here.
A book (Photo: Sarit Gofen)
The road to Sefra, a kosher chef restaurant that opened about a year ago in Rehovot, is more reminiscent of roads leading to event and wedding complexes.
You pass an industrial area, surrounded by orchards, a large dirt parking lot with parking attendants and an elaborate driveway with speakers scattered around it and music that accompanies the entrance gate.
The entrance hall also evokes an association with a wedding hall.
So stimulating that that reflex - to get a table number from the hostess and look for the check box - wakes up immediately.
For all of Avi Efrati's food reviews, the
space is huge, with several spaces and a large bar in his navel, not far from which is located, of course, the DJ station.
For the avoidance of doubt, as an event hall this space radiates luxury and investment in everything.
Nothing was spared here.
But we are in a restaurant where every detail makes it clear in every possible way that here they invested big and come to talk big.
It is possible and necessary.
A book (Photo: Sarit Gofen)
The entire staff goes out of their way to be helpful, kind and happy.
No hint or undertone of alienated nonchalance of the familiar kind exists here.
It is part of the DNA of the difference between a place in the suburbs, a suburb, and the familiar one from the big city.
In charge of the kitchen is Benny Madar, a graduate of "Cordon Bleu" and who also has a resume for a work phase in Noma in Copenhagen.
This kosher means that here we will not find cute creatures from the sea, no goat in its mother's milk for its inclinations and that the desserts are not based on milk, butter and cream.
I am not one of those who believe that what is not prey is not good.
Kosher obviously narrows the range of options, imposes some limitation on cuts of meat and is a not impossible challenge for good professionals in the dessert sector;
But it is absolutely possible to provide a clearly worthy chef's kitchen in kosher restaurants as well.
It is possible and necessary, because there are not enough kosher restaurants, let alone good kosher ones.
When the poison is left out
I always left this place satisfied.
This time it was even better
To the full article
Come to talk big.
A book (photo: Sarit Gofen)
Test result.
A book (photo: Sarit Gofen)
The menu is divided into starters, fish mains, meat mains and one pasta.
We started with tuna sashimi and a cigar of facial parts (76 both) alongside focaccia (28).
The focaccia was good and so were the dips-spreads on the side - salsa, tahini, roasted garlic and hot peppers.
The sashimi had quite a few pieces of red tuna with plenty of investment all around - tabbouleh nuts (pecans, cashews and peanuts), vegan yogurt, radishes, lime and soursop leaves.
The tuna itself was fine, the rest less so.
The tabbouleh had too dominant celery flavors, the vegan yogurt was not tasty enough and as a side dish it belonged to the not really necessary genre and all the ingredients did not result in the sangria that is required of it of this type.
It wasn't bad and the bottom line stopped somewhere on the medium/standard level.
Certainly not something that aligns with the pretensions of the place.
The cigar is filled with brain, with what has been defined as a spicy Moroccan stew, cradle rams and coriander.
A large and generous portion arrived, with three cigars in which the oiliness of the frying was evident, a stuffing whose flavors were not consolidated enough, cradle aioli which added to the feeling of oiliness-heaviness and no balancing refreshing elements - greens/leaves or any vegetables, for example.
When combining a popular dish in a chef's restaurant, the trick is to upgrade it somewhere.
I can guess that in this dish the upgrade attempt was expressed in the way they cooked the brain.
Chef Meder is portrayed as someone who invests and not as someone who overlaps.
But the result did not feel like an upgrade to the popular dish and the bottom line left a feeling of too much oil and too little flavor on the palate.
Not an impossible challenge.
A book (photo: Sarit Gofen)
The anti-kosher chatters in the talkbacks are welcome to stop their keyboards right now.
No, it's absolutely not true that the kosher steak hasn't been born yet.
In any case, he didn't come to her book
Sea fish shawarma (138) and Sinta Nebraska 250 grams (176) were the main ones.
The fish dish arrived on two separate plates - seasoned and seared pieces of sea bass with browned onions, tahini and leaves, and a plate with four rounds of lettuce, salsa verde and shifka pepperoni.
The favorite idea is to turn any dough into a small loaf.
The fish itself could have been seasoned more correctly and lacked a touch of external searing but it was not bad.
His connection to all the other flavor givers did him good.
They upgraded it.
If there were more fish, we could have eaten the whole fish in a flat form.
Since there were none, we only ate part of it that way.
The good toppings did the job even without the dough.
It wasn't a perfect dish as mentioned, mainly performance-wise, but conceptually it was undoubtedly worthy and also in the result test it left dust to the two dishes that preceded it.
The sirloin, with handmade gnocchi, beef sauce, asparagus, peas and truffles was the disappointment of the evening.
The meat itself was very very average.
The anti-kosher chatters in the talkbacks are welcome to stop their keyboards right now.
No, it's absolutely not true that the kosher steak hasn't been born yet.
In any case, he didn't come to her book.
The meat was really faded in its taste.
The fact that it came medium rare as requested did not reveal any signs of life in it and the additives around it were of the vulgar variety - a strong, coarsely flavored sauce, which although enhanced the flavors of the meat, but in itself was not tasty at all.
It was the most expensive and least good dish of the meal.
Safra, a place that takes itself seriously, cannot afford such meat nor such sauce.
We shared a savosa (52) for dessert, based on semolina cake and citrus syrup, coconut pastry cream, toasted coconut on top and caramelized nectarine and coconut flakes on the side.
The base - the semolina cake itself, was banal.
Everything else mainly added sweetness and, like additional dishes in a meal, revealed good intentions, investment and generosity that lead to a too mediocre result.
A place whose colors are strong.
The account in the book (Photo: ShutterStock)
It is impossible to ignore the intuitive-experiential element that her book provides, especially not in its kashrut contexts.
There are other such non-kosher restaurants.
Kosher, which provides a certain degree of grandiosity of this kind, is less.
Ariza in the book has, therefore, a lot of presence.
It's a place whose colors are strong, its soundtrack is dominant, the service there goes out of its way and they don't charge a delivery fee in principle.
Sophisticated diners of Parisian bistronomic dishes in cool wine bars are not her target audience.
Rehovotim of the type that usually go to Soho in Rishon Lezion - yes and definitely.
Even for the latter, the packaging here, as of now, is stronger than the content.
The food is expensive but most of the dishes fail to rise above mediocrity, the meat fails to be kosher of the good kind and the dessert does not betray the wisdom of a chef who knows how to raise beyond the given limits.
It's a bit unbelievable that I'm writing this, but NIS 546 for a full meal including two mains is not a lot of money in a chef restaurant today.
It's a shame that the payoff, which is mediocre despite the investment and efforts, doesn't justify it.
Her book will be successful, that's clear.
Kashrut keepers in the lowlands don't really have many alternatives.
This does not mean that it does not require significant improvements in the kitchen.
"Safra", Hamada 18, Park Hamada, Rehovot, 072-3922099
Food
reviews
My father Efrati
Tags
Restaurant reviews