It used to be a must stop.
Bambino (Photo: David Rosenthal)
The corona has claimed quite a few economic victims.
Shops closed, businesses went bankrupt.
Even today, more than a year after the economy returned to full regular activity, there are those who are still paying the price.
Sometimes it's really heart wrenching, especially if you have a sentimental attachment to a place and suddenly it doesn't exist anymore.
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the news about the closing of Shawarma in Bambino at the end of 2020 was painful.
Although, the last time I was present there was a year or two before, but Bambino has always been a symbol for me.
She sat on one side of Jaffa Street, when across the road all the leading shawarmas in the city - the brothers, Hazan and Moghrabi.
A proud and fighting opposition.
Before every football game, during every trip or after comforting mourners (what to do? Not all circumstances of visiting Haifa are happy) Bambino was the stop.
A small pita, but that's not the big problem.
Bambino (Photo: David Rosenthal)
My heart was in Bambino and my ego was in Sabah.
I was waiting for the moment when I would code the place again
A year ago, something happened - Bambino was resurrected on Bankim Street, about half a kilometer from the original location. Since then, I haven't stopped fantasizing. On a visit earlier this year to Haifa, I tried three shawarmas, but my heart was in Bambino and my selfishness was in Sabah. I was waiting for the moment when I would code the place again. The right
moment Arrived last Saturday. Maccabi Haifa - Beitar Jerusalem, fire confrontation in the hottest stadium.
There is no football experience in Israel that is at all similar to a game at Sami Ofer, with the visibility, the atmosphere and usually the football as well.
But you know, let's not pretend, I'm not sure that the enthusiasm for football (from the dawn of my personal history) would have been so great without the food in front of me.
After all, every fan will agree, the culinary experience is an integral part of the event.
With great excitement I passed the Holy of Holies on Jaffa Street.
A quick look at Hazan and Brothers made it clear to me that the shawarma business in the city on Saturdays is confusing even without a game nearby.
I remembered the old stadium nearby in Kiryat Eliezer and the old and different soccer experience that was there, in the afternoon games, looking for parking in the crowded alleys and, of course, in the shawarma that has been absent from there for more than two years.
After a few hundred meters it arrived - a slight turn onto Bankim Street, and a red sign is revealed in all its glory.
integrity
First time I gave a score of 10, and I don't regret it for a moment
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Modesty is not a dirty word, but there is something that makes it so.
Shawarma in Bambino (Photo: David Rosenthal)
Like an iconic TV series whose stars reunited twenty years later to bring it back up again when they were older and more exhausted, so was the feeling about Bambino
Modesty is not a dirty word, or at least it doesn't have to be, and the new Bambino exudes modesty - the store is small and clean, the salad bar is limited, the wheel doesn't resemble the old Bambino's magnificent wheels or its competitors in size either, but to their credit the price is accordingly - 36 A shekel per pita, very cheap on the scale of shawarma in Israel in general and Haifa in particular.
The number of diners is not too large, but certainly respectable in relation to the size of the place.
So modesty is not necessarily a dirty word, but there is one element that makes it problematic: the quality of the meat.
Modesty never characterized Bambino in this context.
This is really not the shawarma I remember, with the pine nuts, the charred meat to the right degree, the precise seasoning and the fine taste.
It's a pale imitation of a completely different recipe, lacking in spices and mostly excessively fatty, as if the entire wheel was smeared with margarine.
The pita itself, by the way, is very tasty, but this is not the dish I filled it with.
The disappointment was huge.
This is not just any shawarma, this is a mythological shawarma that was supposed to rise again and lost its properties.
Like an iconic TV series whose stars reunited twenty years later to bring it back up again when they were older and more exhausted, so was the feeling about Bambino.
The attempt to bring one of the oldest and best institutions in the city of Nahal to a miracle is a serious failure.
So how did it come out?
As mentioned, there are good things about Bambino - the cleanliness, the price and the quality of the pita are definitely inviting - but there are also quite a few less good elements, ones that significantly reduce the experience.
The size is less disturbing in this case compared to the bland and pale taste.
In the KMA index (quantity-price-quality from 1 to 10), shawarma in Bambino gets a score of 5. Not only are there good ones in Haifa, there are many, many good ones in Tel Aviv and Rishon Lezion as well. I didn't enjoy it, and I think what hurt
me Especially the myth busting. At least the game was good.
Bambino, Bankim 2, Haifa
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