Cafe Martini, Tel Aviv/Yaniv Granot
It used to be customary to go to the Carmel Market for this, in the summer it is customary to hold the ceremony on the beach, but for several years now the Tel Aviv heart rate measurement (and following it, fair or not, the national one as well) has been carried out on Dizengoff Street.
A short round, back and forth, bar-hopping and fast-pudding, and you have an indication.
It is not measured only by the rhythm of the beats or their quality, by the indirect measures or even by the look in the eyes.
This indication should feel the air - an intoxicating but unmistakable mixture of suffocated and compressed, moist and present.
And this is the desired routine, yes?
Dizengoff does not want and cannot do otherwise.
He expects people, and a lot of them, together.
A lot of places that look at a quick glance like one big place, a happy stretch from the square until the street spills out of the city, with that curve that no one really wants to curve.
Many months after the inferno, this streak remains broken.
Air flashes and black holes, alternating.
He trained slowly, step by step, place by place.
Now, it seems, you can go out and measure again.
with a coffee martini.
good you came
Coffee Martini/Yonathan Ben Chaim
The colorful Italian bar has not yet closed for a year on the corner of Dizengoff and Gordon, but it has already shed several incarnations.
It started with an excellent, two-pronged emphasis on cocktails and food, downshifted on the mixing side and naturally moved on to brunch, changing hands in the kitchen and succumbing like everyone else to the bad October war winds.
Three months and more later, he returns from the long hiatus with a new chef, and adjusts expectations with the city, with the street and with himself.
Still colorful, still Italian, still happy, still trying to spread optimism, but this promise of dolce vita, the good life that is a deep blue sexy riviera, remains for now, and probably for the foreseeable future, written on ice.
that's how it is.
We've all become a little less naive since then, not to mention those whose opening point was cynical in the first place.
At least that ice is still spinning fast in the glass from which the martini is poured, right?
Aggregation mode that is all in a subtle bubble
A brunch that is a welcome break from everything
To the full article
remembers his youth
Coffee Martini/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
Write on the ice.
Coffee Martini/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
"Welcome back," he announces in his first words, even before detailing the dishes and prices, "we missed you."
It's a bit kitschy, yes, but also a bit mutual
Daniel Nguyen's new-old menu doesn't rock the boat for now, building on some proven past hits and strengthening them with small but focused hand gestures.
"Welcome back," he announces in his first words, even before detailing the dishes and prices, "we missed you."
It's a bit kitschy, yes, but also a bit mutual.
There is hot focaccia here, plump and oily in a good way, of course, with olive oil, garlic confit and tomato dip (NIS 25), a spicy plate (fermented red chili, fried green pepper, basil sauce and garlic confit, NIS 18) and what is known here "Martini plate" (cheeses, olives and quite a few other things, NIS 68), as well as three thick-high bruschettas - with Padron and Caesar sauce, with grilled mushrooms and goat cheese and with vegan Mergez sausage and onion jam (NIS 34-46).
Mainly there is here, certainly with what is described above, the same bar who has not forgotten his role and remembers his youth well.
True, without the predation of the cocktails that was here at the beginning, but with enough abilities and means to reproduce good parts of it.
Very good (the price, for example, and the wonderful but rare words here which are "house wine").
A dream of dolce vita.
Martini coffee gratin/Walla! system, will yield gratin
Two salads continue the celebration - burnt green vegetables in chimichurri sauce (NIS 59) and a large panzanella bowl (NIS 62) - but the really effective flirtation comes from a seductive triangle of flaky arancini (with tomato vinaigrette and green salsa, NIS 38), Potato gratin (with ricotta cream and confit garlic, NIS 42) and burrata cheese (with green onion and pistachio salsa, NIS 69).
The first, in a format that invites marital quarrels, offers three medium-sized balls, less cheesy-stretchy and more stew-caught, waiting for a fork to anger them out.
The second dish, a wonderful engineering creation of potatoes, ricotta and frying, is a crispy piece of comfort, golden but oil-free, and very tasty, even to the eyes.
The burrata, with a lovely green sauce and an original thank-you-not-again-with-that-cheesy-red, closed an almost alarming sequence at its level, because you fear that this is the peak, and that after it only you will give up, and you wonder how many times you can order the same dish without being looked at crooked.
The really effective flirting.
Burrata of Cafe Martini/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
Five pizzas and two pastas close the more "main" part of the menu.
There is a margarita here (NIS 54), a spicy marinara with candied garlic (NIS 52), Bianca (NIS 62), and also versions with asparagus-mushrooms and zucchini-goat cheese, but the weather and the mood attracted the Italian noodles - Spaghetti a la Siciliana ( tomato sauce, kalamata olives, capers, garlic, parsley, hot chili, NIS 69) and spaghetti "con molica" (white wine, butter, sage, parsley, garlic, capers, NIS 74).
The latter, a small hill of great flavors, determined the relinquishment of the round dough as justified.
Elegant only when viewed from the side, buttery when you dive in, and quite wild towards the end, in your futile attempts to pull a little of everything with your fork, and a lot of the date next door.
A small hill of big flavors.
Coffee Martini/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
The dessert menu has not yet changed here, and it is doubtful that there is a need for it.
There is affogato (NIS 26), profiteroles with vanilla ice cream, caramelized pistachio, pistachio cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce and hazelnuts (yes, all together, NIS 46), "Sunday Martini" (NIS 38) and no less than four types of tiramisu - with pistachio cream And caramelized pistachio (NIS 46), with red fruits (NIS 44), in a corrupted Nutella version (NIS 46) and as a classic that there is nothing to play with when it is done correctly.
Here, the performance is moderately sweet and moderately bitter, thick and requires a firm hand and a determined movement of that hand.
A spoonful and another spoonful, and here the effort is worth it.
A classic, as it should be.
Tiramisu of Cafe Martini/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
It's all true, and the fact that he's here, a smiling and active kitchen animal, is all the optimism that everyone is looking for these days
Nguyen, just 29 years old, has an impressive track record in Cicetti and Bardler, and a life story with enough twists to make any Netflix binge too melodramatic, almost imaginary to the skeptical observer.
But it's all true, and the fact that he's here, a smiling and active kitchen animal, is all the optimism that everyone is looking for these days.
His father came to Israel from Vietnam, got married and at one point provided his son with the ideal food inspiration (not to mention the mother's Yemeni kitchen skills, which they strengthened and supported).
"He was one of the best cooks I know, cooked in a lot of restaurants and also worked with Israel Aharoni," he said, "I entered the kitchen with him as a child, but I didn't think that was my future of course."
He was wrong, even if that mistake included some more twists and turns.
A serious car accident ("my leg completely collapsed, they wanted to amputate it, I was very lucky, to say the least") that he had at the age of 17 led him a few years later to Bergamo, Italy, as a player in the local wheelchair basketball team.
"I was terribly lonely there, and I was looking for myself in the city," he described, "as in many cases like this, you end up finding yourself in food - in the restaurants of the Italian mammoths, or in simple working-class restaurants, but what food. Perfect."
"The direction is clear."
Nguyen/Sydney Levy
That deep loneliness brought him back to Israel and to self-searching.
He canceled in advance, because of the injury, the option of ever working in the kitchen, but nevertheless he was drawn there, oh well, gets an opportunity and takes it with both hands, strong and confident.
Until here, until a coffee martini.
"I want to make relatively simple food here, not too complex, light for the most part, one that is based on Italian cuisine but not necessarily classic. After all, we are in Israel and the Middle East," he characterizes with a smile, "Our audience changes a lot but the direction is clear."
This Danielian mosaic - Vietnam and Yemen, Italy and Israel - is for now being revealed with moderate and calculated slowness, only at its edges.
Despite this, it still shines with delicious, young, smart opportunities and possibilities.
You can imagine what will happen here later, with the full disclosure.
By then, at least Dizengoff's pulse was beating steadily again.
And he only increases.
Cafe Martini, 130 Dizengoff, Tel Aviv, 077-9386465
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Dizengoff
Italian food
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