Brunch, Pop & Pop Restaurant (Yaniv Granot)
It's very rare that the first thing you get spilled after you enter a restaurant is that you made a mistake. Most often let you settle in, soften the air with a little Welcome and smiles, allow for an adjustment period, and something to drink. The real experts even praise you with total agreement throughout the evening. What you say catches. Still, it's your business, and not everyone needs advice, recommendation or insight.
A brunch celebration that you can hardly see in Tel Aviv
Breakfast that you no longer see here, in a place where you no longer see
few places know how to do night and morning. This brunch is proof
that Carmel Market and Levinsky Market met for a hot date. This brunch is their
love child It is very rare that the first thing you hear at the entrance is that you made a mistake. This is said with an apologetic smile, of course, bomb service nonetheless, but the eyes are experienced and the scars are real. It's not just a mistake, you understand between the lines. If you sit as you always do - in the corner of the bar, your right and her left - you create a problem for you, her, the kitchen and everyone around her.
It's very rare that this is what you hear, and even while standing, before sitting down. Rare, but in the case of a weekend brunch at a pop and pop restaurant - as justified as it gets.
Aruch table, long table. Pop & Pop
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The high playground of Pop & Pop and Shabtai Seagull – and high is not only in design and intentions, high is literally like the 14th floor of the Hagag Towers on Fourth Street in Tel Aviv – spreads out over a huge maze of hidden corridors and doors that open out of thin air.
It includes, among other things, a private room for festive dinners that require privacy (and celebrations), an event and conference space whose panoramic view cannot fit into a single lens, however wide, a bar that starts starting only after the sun passes by the terrace, and the baking anchor that serves their excellent bakery on the ground floor, and does a high-five with it to complete almost a full day of delicious multi-front activity.
And in the midst of it all - in the middle, but as an integral part of the mosaic - the restaurant around which everything happens, and without which nothing really happens.
Hot Love Boy
The brunch that put Carmel and Levinsky on the plate
See full article >
Cocktail, and starters. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
Hands, eyes, and stomach games. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
Like any intelligent and mature being, the focus has slowly shifted to what really matters, and to what without it no design and no millions will help
Pop & Pope (or Pop & Pope, if you're into foreign letters) opened just before COVID-19, stopped along with everyone else for methodical thinking about the future of the world, and returned like a goal-oriented culinary launch satellite.
The talk from the opening about investing millions and designing an Armani house still echoes their receipts in the background, but like any intelligent and mature being, the focus has slowly shifted to what really matters, and why without it no design and no millions will help. The food, of course.
Blessing of the way. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
It's still sparkling here on a Saturday afternoon, but the happy party takes off quite a bit of bass, and makes up for all the food the human eye has seen
Saturn, a fascinating character you should have a conversation with anyway (but it's best to have this conversation only after confirming that you're in high aerobic shape), moves around the world at the pace of a frequent flyer, stopping just to cook. Shanghai? Tel Aviv? It doesn't really matter when the restaurant exudes such a distinctly international, and when the food puts one foot here and one foot there and starts dancing like that without stumbling for a moment.
In the evening, he says, the restaurant wraps itself in a more glamorous and party dress, directs the food precisely to that focus and tries to provide a total closed-open club experience, but subtle in its complexity. Saturday afternoons, however, are an almost entirely different story. Still sparkling, but the happy party takes off quite a bit of bass, and makes up for all the food the human eye has seen.
A view worthy of food. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
Until elimination. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
The deal here is the simplest of the simplest, and almost completely eliminates tedious menu tinkering
The deal here is simple – 180 shekels will give you a main to choose from, and opening a table that could hold three different brunches on its own (and there's also a deal under a half-secret table with a wink of only the first ones, which reminded us very much of that deal under a half-secret table, half with a wink that was at Raphael's weekend dinner, which disappeared from the world when too many people realized there was a glitch in the system) - and almost completely obviates you from tedious menu tinkering.
Then a cocktail (Mosco Mule, Saturday lunch after all), and then comes the flood. A fancy basket of pastries (tall, plump burekas, a greenish cylindrical pastry on the inside and destructive on the outside, challah and za'atar bagels that also come with delicious salads and dips) that requires you to plan the battle like a general who knows that at some point his stomach will march on it, "coal kohlrabi" with harima aioli and chives, sea fish sashimi with sriracha, avocado and Doritos and beets with goat cheese, silan and poppy poppy crackling on top. It's the first waiters platter, be careful.
Depth diving. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
At this very point, they approach you, coordinate expectations, refuse to rejoice that you have caught three-quarters of a bar because of your real estate stubbornness, and wonder what main thing you want. Good luck.
Then comes a Chinese cucumber salad (with garlic, onion and coconut) that is taken casually and doesn't come off your hand until there's nothing more to take, truffle tuna (with crème fraiche, chives and miso) shining with umbrellas, and also a wagyu shakel in miso aioli that plays the umami game nicely, and wins it.
Stop, cocktail (dry martini, first soon, though), exit to the terrace, view of the city from above. Keep.
Dim sum (sirloin, coconut, corn, basil) made with millimeter precision, yakitori salmon with onion aioli, lettuce and fried onions, and also the surprise of this stage, in the form of beef tartare (with mustard miso and cabbage chips) that dragged the attendees into a seemingly delicate fork battle, and very determined in practice.
This is also the stage where you are approached, set expectations, refuse to rejoice at having caught three-quarters of a bar because of your real estate stubbornness, and wonder what main thing you want. Good luck.
Battle of forks. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
It's Saturday after all, it's Sunday after all. Pop and Pop (Photo: Walla!, Yaniv Granot)
The options are relatively diverse – nine in number, with an escape for each eater – and focus nonetheless on the worlds of land and sea. There are dashi and leek shrimp, fillet chunks or lamb chops (extra charge), Pepper Chicken and Wagyu brisket, as well as wild spaghetti, "sea xerol" with the same fun fish and ocean broth tightened to the point of thoroughly wiping, or red curry locus (also for an extra fee) that puts kefir lime, roast potatoes, roasted eggplant, cherry tomatoes and basil on a deep plate, and does all this without losing sight of the destination.
In the end, because you've just finished a modest meal that will only take you until next Wednesday, there's dessert too. And because this is a concert by Ofer Ben Natan, the dilemma is only how many tickets to take, and not God forbid whether to take (buy, more precisely, 54-68 shekels). "Coconut" (tapioca, fruit and coli meng-passionfruit), "chocolate" (cocoa leaves, mascarpone ice cream, pecans, carmo janduia, espresso), "cheese" (crème fraiche cake, strawberries, lychee, pistachio, candied pine nuts), you have fun and know that the answer is "corn" (corn crème brulee, caramelized popcorn, cornmeal caramel, cornflakes milk cream). There are just mythologies, there are mythologies that really happen, and there is this, a leap to the fountain of genius, no less.
The answer is always corn. Pop & Pop
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Pop and pop people still correspond with those opening days, and maintain them as they should be - consistent live performances, art that provokes conversation on the walls, and especially a worldview that knows that this show is exactly the show next to which you *yes* can, and should, and should, eat something.
This collage is very difficult to perform, and requires daily walking on a tightrope over the city, high enough for it to be exciting, low enough to see what happens to those who do not succeed. One can imagine Saturn tying the ends of this rope to the corners of the 14th floor every morning and going on its moonwalk. On Shabbat, when everyone wants to get down and get some rest, this relationship only gets stronger and better.
Pop and Pop, HaArba'a 28 (South Building of the Arba'a Towers), 14th floor, Tel Aviv. Brunch Saturday 12:00-16:00, 03-7595000
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