Beautiful and inviting. Santi (Photo: Dor Kedmi)
The young chef Guy Arish managed to step into Yossi Shitrit's big shoes and raise a completely different restaurant there than the one that was common during Shitrit's long years there. Now, with the backing of his partners from the Baraka Group, Arish sets out with Santi, a new and completely different place.
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food reviews Mashya's Arish was exposed to the world as a meticulous chef, engaged in complex and sophisticated processes. No dish with him is really simple. Behind each of them hides a great deal of mastery of diverse techniques, both traditional and modern. At Santee, Japan meets the Mediterranean with touches of Italy and France.
Mashya is a restaurant; Santi, more of a food and drinks bar. This means that in the procedure, most of the dishes here are small to medium and there is a lot of investment in the wine and alcohol menu as well. And because of this, you can also sit on several dishes combined with a drink, or eat right (but then you have to order quite a few dishes).
Away from standard. Santi (Photo: Dor Kedmi)
It's very important to understand this, because Santi is definitely not a place for everyone. It's a high place, not just culinary
Before entering Santee's beautiful and inviting space, you really need to get to Santee. And this, how to put it mildly, is a slightly oppressive event. In addition to the unbearable traffic jams on the way to the city and the terrible traffic jams within the city, which are part of the routine, in the Santi sector there are too few parking lots and all of them are expensive. And the icing on the cake, just before entering - a glimpse of Ben Yehuda Street, which has been blocked for a long time. This is what a dystopia looks like. Not fun.
But we're in Santi's space, and when the work is over and life itself returns, the sleepy old street will undoubtedly wake up from its slumber. Beautiful here. Two spaces, internal and external, are small. In the interior is a large marble table, like an island, around which sit and on one side of which the chef, his cooks and bartenders work. The acoustics could have been better, so that both diners could hear the waitress, for example. Still, it's pleasant here, with a contemporary, somewhat high-rise atmosphere, the kind that less sophisticated and up-to-date diners or partygoers might not find themselves in. It's very important to understand this, because Santi is definitely not a place for everyone. She is a high place, not just culinary.
And having said that, we will say that Santi is very good. Really. enormous effort, real investment in every dish, attempt not to be standard at almost any stage; All of these can be a recipe for a crash, for uncommunicative techniques, for a fiasco on the plate. Here, usually, the ingredients join together for a result that manages to delight the palate. Let it be said already: we didn't eat big food at Santee. There are no amazing dishes in front of which the diner finds himself in a sweeping "wow!" response; But most of the time the great effort has a compromise, it doesn't feel shattered, and it tastes really good and really pleases. That's a great deal.
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Huge investment. Santi (Photo: Walla! Editorial Board, Yaniv Granot)
Compromise effort. Santi (Photo: Dor Kedmi)
The spreads were so delicious that they went for at least one round of refills. All breads, from all vendors, excelled. I can't remember when I came across a piece of bread that is nominally used for nonchalant dipping and is actually so addictive
The not long menu, on only one page, includes a category "on coal" and another category that includes everything else, that is, what does not come from coal, cold and hot.
The wine list is extensive but not too big. It doesn't send the sipper on an arduous journey to selection, but it has a lot of really excellent options, most of which are really reasonably priced, and that's not something we're used to. There are five or six bottles poured into the glass and a stimulating cocktail menu. We ordered a glass of Greek Assirtico (45) and a cocktail "Santi Dirty Martini" (58) alongside a plate of breads (38 shekels), raw crab in Lecce de Tigre (72) and raw crystal shrimp with hummus shoyu (64).
First came the bread, of several kinds, each excellent in itself, as well as homemade focaccia. Lots of bread was in the basket, much more than what you are used to getting when ordering a portion of bread outside. Alongside him there was also a huge investment in dips. Really excellent olive oil with homemade green Tabasco and green beans, locally made ricotta, butter with crispy chicken skin, crème fraiche with XO sauce (seafood based). The spreads were so delicious that they went for at least one round of refills. All breads, from all vendors, excelled. I can't remember when I came across a portion of bread that is nominally used for nonchalant dipping and is actually so addictive.
The asirtico was really tasty and the dirti martini cocktail managed to be sharp, complex, very dry, as requested and a perfect accompaniment to the food. It was a great start, and from there we moved on to cancer.
Lecce de Tigre (tiger milk) is the juice left over from the ceviche, the one in which all the ingredients that have joined together are gathered together into a flavor compound. A good leche de tigre can serve as a wonderful sauce for any dish, even a main. Here it was whipped on a cold, minimally pressed open crab. Not that there was plenty to eat in this dish, two small bites each, but it was delicate, harmonious and delicious.
The shrimp dish consisted of four crystals pickled in shoyu (fermented chickpeas) and kushu (fermented citrus peels) accompanied by blood orange, olive oil, monk's hat flowers and XO sauce. Again a tiny, delicate dish, which you could feel the touch of each of its ingredients, which joined together into a complex, delicious harmony.
Delicate, harmonious and delicious. Santi (Photo: Walla! Editorial Board, Yaniv Granot)
To this writer it was delicious. On the other side of the table, it felt a bit fluttering in its hardcore flavors
The Little Jam with cheese dish (42) had two Little Jam shelter bakes, with mushroom garum and "Spring Valley" goat cheese grated over it. The previous two dishes brought records of refinement and a meeting of flavor ingredients that speak quietly. Here, on the other hand, there was a lot of noise. The lettuce itself was fresh and excellent. The cheese is also very good but the overall taste dragged into over-saltiness and imbalance in general.
Next: Gruyere tortellini (58) with an emulsion-based filling of butter and Spring Valley cheese. More than it was tortellini being chewed on, it evoked associations with oyster being sucked-sucked on its liquids. The combination of butter flavors and concentrated umami from the cheese was especially delicious.
Octopus skewer dish (49) was the least good of the meal. The impaled octopus itself was perfectly good but everything around went too sour, too scattered, too confused. A bit like the Little Jam dish but further north, into a somewhat floppy additive. It's definitely a dish that needs focus and reconsolidation.
Charcutier Eran Bik's sausage on "milk bread" and olive oil aioli (32) is designed for lovers of the strong and tough kind of charcuterie flavors. To this writer it was delicious. On the other side of the table, it felt a bit fluttering in its hardcore flavors. A proper portion, but not for every diner.
We closed with New York cheesecake (42), cheese mousse with oat caramble, sour cream ice cream, tonka sauce and condensed milk. The cheesecake itself was a kind of large white cube, evoking an association with a cheese cube bought from the cheesemaker or in the supermarket - Bulgarian, for example. Its texture was airy and most of its strength stemmed from the combination with the ice cream that touched the sourness, the caramel that added crunch and the sauce that wrapped in sweetness. Good dessert.
They didn't come to make a round. The account in Santee (Photo: ShutterStock)
I would love to come back here in a few months to see if this "good" to "very good" manages to become excellent. I don't think I'm risking much now if I bet it's highly likely
So what did we have here? Lots of dishes, mostly small, good to very good for the most part, with two of them - the Little Jam and the Octopus - suffering from a lack of focus.
All dishes put a considerable effort into it, most of which does not feel like a strain on the palate. That's a compliment. The right combination of ingredients makes the taste nonchalant, fun. Those who don't understand how much effort is put into the road may not be able to appreciate. Those who do should take their hats off to Arish.
As mentioned, most of the time it's not "wow!" food but yes really tasty and fun food. A little more rubbing and focus - Santi was just out of her way - and this would be a really excellent food bar. The cocktail we sampled excelled, the good wine is sane priced, and if the acoustics had been reset a bit more our entertainment experience would have been full and complete.
A perusal of the menu and the small number of dishes seemingly create a sense of high food pricing. But in practice, it is possible that partly because of the great richness of the dishes and also because of the huge bread portion and the heavy dips something you can't stop eating from, the final pricing line – about NIS 400 before drinks and service – is more than reasonable. We ate small portions but it wasn't like we left with an urge to look for pizza or shawarma outside. We were even quite blown away.
Despite the enormous façade and what might be perceived by less experienced and sophisticated diners as a farcical place, Santi is, in my opinion, a place that is fairly priced and does not leave a feeling of "we came to make a turn on you". This is food whose "food cost" is not cheap at all, and the investment in it is great. As such, he is in the bottom line perfectly decent.
I would love to come back here in a few months to see if this "good" to "very good" manages to become excellent. I don't think I'm risking much now if I bet it's highly likely. Only let them finish the dystopia known as Ben Yehuda Street by then, and that the dystopia into which our lives here have unfolded in recent months will end.
Santee, Gordon 17, Tel Aviv, 073-3861622
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