another world.
Santi (Photo: Dor Kami)
The modern pinball machine was born in the United States during the Great Depression, but earlier versions of it go way back, somehow reaching the gates of Louis XIV's palace in France.
In the following decades quite a few innovations were put into it, but only in the late seventies was it properly electrified, replaced its mechanical mechanism - power levers, springs, foot pedals - and connected to the advantages (or disadvantages, depending on how romantic you are) of electronics, and the worlds of gaming.
Ironically, this moment was both its peak and its death certificate, as these developments simultaneously heralded the arrival of video games to the world.
The pinball, shiny and colorful and upgraded and lit up, just couldn't compete, and her frenzied silver ball finally found rest.
That is, until now, in "Santi".
Juggling show.
Arish (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
in front of the eyes
Arish (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
The new gaming hall of the Barkha group ("Onza", Mishiya") was built inside Ron Huldai's Excavation Casino in North Tel Aviv. All around are canals and ditches, dust as far as the eye can (not) see and what is visible to the average driver, as well as to pedestrians, like a roulette wheel of road signs and signs Lanes, but a few steps inward, into Gordon Street, dark doors and another world.
And in the heart of the world, and the hall, Guy Arish, a ball of mercury that needs no operating levers. He moves from side to side, squats and lifts himself up in cat-like movements, turns back and comes back. He is in front of you, And poof! He disappeared into the kitchen. A moment in front of the door, and a moment on the flame. He starts a dish, closes a dish, serves a dish, explains about a dish. For a moment I thought he would take a dish back because he was not satisfied with his own dish. That moment of course came, and he smiles.
"War, is that what we need to understand?"
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An island in the heart of the storm.
Santi (Photo: Dor Kami)
Santi is a very new pinball machine, and the most modern there is.
The colors are not as bright as in the American arcade, but the buttons are constantly pressed by the player-customers, and the endless chain of builders functions as the operating handles.
And given that there is also a ball, and that everyone came to play, a show was set up for them in the shape of a huge marble surface, an island in the heart of the storm.
On the left, a bartender is mixing cocktails on him, in the center Arish and the remaining wigs are customers who were lucky enough to watch all this, because there are many "open kitchens" around, and even more than that, designs that try to bring you into the experience, but there is none.
Up to now.
go-to
Santi's cancer
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The menu is small, and starts drinking itself from the moment you sit down.
"Holiday bread" with a plate of olive oil and three luxurious saucers (butter with crispy chicken skin crumbs, anyone?) that are both dipping and spreading, then a spoon with everything left over, beef tartare (52 NIS), a plate of raw fish (98 NIS) Bokhat, palmadea with brown butter and wing sauce (NIS 68) and also what will surely be the urban go-to from now on - raw blue crab with "lecha de tigra", sake and passion fruit (NIS 78), which satisfies the eyes without forgetting to satisfy the fork.
The plot "on coal" continues the min-max games.
Wild mushrooms (NIS 28), veal sausage and almonds, a trout skewer that asks you to wrap yourself in a white-transparent fatty blanket (NIS 36), baby back ribs (NIS 28) that stamp a passport specifically in Japan, a bowl of mussels and a deep plate of "fermented chips", And actually the morning after a stormy night of love between buttery potatoes, very sharp knife movements and hollandaise sauce.
All this is complemented by a tempura triangle (calamari, shrimp or oyster), smart but not sophisticated desserts (rice pudding, for example, or a cheesecake that finally innovated something in the worlds of cheesecakes), a very liberal wine menu in pouring it into glasses and a cocktail book specially built for serving, while that he mixes classics and breaks them down, assembles on demand but is confident in himself to flip through more and more glasses.
Without definitions, with all the flavor.
Santi (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
the morning after
Santi's chips (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Granot)
"An ideal evening here starts mellow and slowly increases, dark but with appealing sex, food that is constantly flowing to the table, full of alcohol and music at exactly the right volume"
Santi doesn't know what she is, and knows she doesn't want to know what she is.
Instead, and probably in the most correct way, she opens doors and offers you a seat.
What happens here next is rougher than a wine bar, more elegant than an izakaya, less than a real restaurant and much sexier than a diner.
Arish talks about night, but not "night life", and aims for a relatively late closing time, which will also attract the people of the industry looking for a drink and a snack after the service.
"We wanted to open a place free from definitions, but not free from service," he tried to explain, "one whose ideal evening starts mellow and slowly increases, dark but with sex appeal, food that is constantly flowing to the table, full of alcohol and music at exactly the right volume, and creative freedom for us , which removes the patterns".
Night, but not "night life".
Santi (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
work, open, enjoy.
Santi (Photo: Dor Kami)
These are a lot of words whose purpose is to say as little as possible - or to say that words are not needed at all - but the evenings of the lecture proved (to the extent that the lecture can prove anything) that it works.
Not to say what this new place in Gordon is, but to simply work, open, and allow people to enjoy themselves without imposing definitions on them.
Santi's party spills over, lifts itself off that marble island, gets up from the indoor tables and exits through a still covered wooden deck.
The cigarette is strategically timed, but everything else is flexible - doors open and close non-stop, and staff carry chairs out on their shoulders to a makeshift warehouse in the side yard, then carry the same chairs in from the same warehouse on the same shoulders.
Glass in hand, I take a rare place on the adjacent wooden bench, and think about the dream of Arish and his people in Barakh for a "boundless place".
From here, on a street that is more dust than a property tax requirement, it sounds a bit big and fantastic.
Map, this is also the only dream worth dreaming.
Santi, Gordon 17, Tel Aviv, reservations here
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