Grandma sent from America a small, thin book with golden edges, which tells about a farmer named Mark who was kind, poor and hardworking.
Three qualities that starred endlessly in the books that were read to us as children.
This Mark, for all his life's sweat, was rewarded with a corn seed that grew ears of gold.
I don't really remember how it ended, only the last drawing where Mark, combed and clean, stands with his hands clasped against the background of a golden cornfield.
The first time I sat down on the bar stool at the OCD restaurant, a few weeks after the place opened in 2016, and Chef Raz Rahab stood in front of me, I knew that once, in another life, I had seen that face, at dusk in a cornfield touched by a magic wand.
Except for a few drops of venom that reached my ears about the boy who dared to open a restaurant, I knew nothing about him at the time.
The farmer of the chefs, Gideon Bilinski of "Ala Ala", is the one who suggested that I join him for a meal for a young customer who opened a small restaurant in Jaffa.
When we went in there and I went to wash my hands, I prayed that it would taste as good as Shifa there, and I wish the place would last, longer than "Shkaf", the restaurant of Chef Eldad Shem-Tov that operated a few years before not far from there, and there they also served a tasting meal to the diners sitting at the bar in front of Amadot The cooking, as in a kind of culinary theater performance.
OCD's bar then included 18 chairs.
Over the years, one chair was added to them, and in a few weeks the place will undergo a major renovation and grow by four, so 23 diners will be able to sit there in a round, when there are two rounds in the evening.
A monster in terms of a similar restaurant in Japan, a dollhouse in Israeli terms.
Lost apricot gazpacho, photo: Haim Yosef
The dishes, I remember, looked like jewels that demonstrated impressive technical ability, and their taste had some originality, something different, new.
I also remember that there were some that I liked very much, and others that felt scattered to me.
"I don't like the food I made back then," says Rahab as we sit on Friday morning in a corner of the bar, across from the bustle of cooks making final preparations for service, the only one of the week that takes place at noon.
"I've really tightened my place as a chef between heritage, taste and visibility. Today, visibility is in last place. I strongly believe that what is not conveyed by blind tasting is not strong enough. After that, you can also make it beautiful."
Three times a year he changes the entire menu.
In preliminary conversations held with each diner, different itineraries are offered to those who suffer from allergies and avoid different animals.
At the beginning of the way, anyone who hates cilantro or dislikes the smell of garlic would have been answered.
From that he got off.
Here, in the land of ancestors, the intimacy of the place, plus the accessibility of the chef, can easily blur the boundaries between cook and diner, between a creation and a plan as you wish.
Sometimes he still goes back to read reviews from the first year.
So the visitors mow down his form, go at him mercilessly.
Some of them sounded like they came equipped with the gossip echoes of the fanatics and conservatives of the brass, who then sought to sum him up as a chef who learned to cook on Instagram.
One often misses the unique language that began to be embroidered on the plates already back then, in the beginning.
An originality that grew sharper in OCD and continued on to "Terza", the wine bar that opened last April in South Tel Aviv and offers dishes unlike anything else.
Ones that teach about a chef that it is difficult to identify the mother spacecraft that grew him.
Except for Ili Dekel, the chef who runs the place, all the other staff, cooks and managers, are from the OCD team, who on a weekly basis leave the mother restaurant and go to work for the younger sister, who has something very mature about her.
The prices are low, like a finger in the eye for all the mantras that have been established in the food culture in this city, the wine list is exceptional, and the service is excellent - although tipping waiters is strictly prohibited.
"Because someone has to start. I can no longer see waiters and waitresses spending hours calculating the shekel. I pay them a full salary with all the social conditions. This is the only way to become a waiter as a profession."
17:00 is the only time you can make a reservation, then you stand in line.
No discounts and no detours.
In this queue you can also meet faces from the screens.
Sometimes it can take even an hour and a half.
Nothing compared to the time it can take you if you ask to reserve a place at OCD.
If you go there, don't miss out on the kraflach, which has lost bread in the filling and dough and on top of it, like a crown of black diamonds, caviar from Nahal Dan, and not the noodle kegel, sprinkled with black pepper, sweet aioli and olive oil jam with chopped gherkins.
Mama, how delicious.
A brand that talks about combining technology and sustainability.
Rahav and "Tana" products, photo: Itiel Zion
gather for a delicious bite
Criticisms were replaced by hugs.
Praises are showered on him and awards are placed on his head.
Last February, OCD reached third place on the Best 05 list, the ranking of restaurants by the British magazine "Restaurant" and San Pellegrino, which this year also launched a regional list for North Africa and the Middle East, including Turkey, which in this field is likened to being placed at home against the Argentina or Brazil soccer teams.
Rahab says that winnings are a pleasant thing, exciting for a few days, maybe a week, but that it is not really interesting, and that the reason he is the Israeli chef with the most titles is because he operates at a time when international guides started to appear in the country.
He reads reviews from beginning to end, as mentioned, occasionally returning even to the first ones that "even seven years later, when I'm no longer charged with anger, it's not pleasant."
So why are you snooping? What should be taken from them?
"There's always something. A visitor came in once, we recognized him sitting at the bar and I had a dish with a sauce based on bone marrow that I really liked. So I gave him another spoonful. In the review he dwelled on the fact that there was too much sauce. Thanks to this I no longer make such changes in dishes. After all, I decide and measure in advance according to what I think is the best. Another visitor wrote that I talked endlessly about each dish and that he didn't have the energy for it. From him I learned to measure myself. It's not straightforward to attack with a 20-minute explanation of each dish," he says, and I remember Rachel, the art teacher, who must have been upset now, because the whole high school repeated that if an artist explains his work with too many words, he might weaken it.
In every menu that Rahav creates, you can find monochromatic dishes, those that come together in one raw material, playing between different textures and flavors from the same source.
The modern Italian kitchen is in love with it, but in Israel you hardly meet such kitchen acts, certainly not at the level you meet at his place.
To this day, my mouth remembers a dish I once ate at his place, in August, where a small plate contained six different interpretations of pumpkin, which came together in one unforgettable bite.
"I like to take one raw material and add supports to it. For example, in the case of today's menu, it's apricots with pepper and the monk's hat. I can make 40 elements out of it, but I won't go beyond the limits. Apricots in themselves. And it can be sour apricots, sweet apricots, fermented apricots , spicy apricot. And at the end of it all you have to come together for a delicious bite. This is first place."
The smell of a burning oven begins to climb into my nostrils.
"You like heat," he calls out to one of the cooks, "turn it down to 180 degrees, it will give the same effect."
The smell of smoke in the nose, and the sound of a plate breaking in the ears.
"Congratulations," he throws into the air, "What's congratulations? Doesn't it hurt?"
I'm asking.
"Obviously", he replies, "it hurts a lot because they don't work correctly. We'll take care of it later", he filters.
Whoever works with you has to deal with strong OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Do you know how to let go?
"And how else. It's true that the intensity in my head hasn't eased, but I'm not here every night, which is a significant thing. Big. At first, I would do all the preparations myself because I know best. I would tell the staff to arrive at five for the service that starts at seven. That has changed. I understood That I am a chef is because I take responsibility for my food and not because I am the best at everything," he says, looking up and starting to list: "Uri has a stronger work discipline than mine, Gal's desire to learn is greater than mine, Yehuda knows how to look away and keep quiet, Dana manages much - but much - better than me, Agam's ability to achieve balance in sauces is terrifying, Or touches the dough better than I can dream of."
And who cuts better than you?
"There is none. I cut the best."
Where did you learn to cut?
"When I worked for Oral Kimchi at Popina. Quantities of cucumbers were thrown in the trash there. One day I called my mother and told her that tonight I was making a chopped salad and that I needed three hours for it. It took me seven hours, today I do it in five minutes. I can do the preparations that my guys do in an hour in a few minutes, but it's not because I'm better, it's because I'm more experienced and in order to make them that way I have to let go, allow them to do. If they become better, I, in a very natural way And directly, I'll be a better dreamer, and that's what I'm supposed to be."
Pumpkin, tea and cookies, photo: Haim Yosef
Food is the medicine
Another moment and the audience will enter.
From all the glory of the exciting meal before my eyes, my heart goes out to a vegetable salad cut very small, which was served to the table in the Rahab family home in Kiryat Ono, where he was born 31 years ago.
To let the smell of fresh cucumbers fill the nostrils in the kitchen of the house that raised him with great talent, to sit there between Raz the child, Shai his little sister and three dogs around.
"A cute and privileged home. The warmest, loving and most optimistic home you could ask for as a child," Raz concludes, and I think of mother Siglit who cooked up trends from cooking shows, and father Tal who assembled grill facilities instead of cars, a pair of parents who knew how to trust and cultivate faith in their son's abilities, From cutting a vegetable salad to the moments when life gnashed its teeth, and their beautiful child became dizzy against the weight of the body and plunged into anorexia.
Trust him when he says everything will be fine.
Hold back with all your might and just stand behind him, with simple arms, in case something goes wrong and he falls.
In the childhood photos buried deep within his Instagram account, there is no trace of the chubby boy who lives in his memory, who at summer camps was ashamed to take his shirt off in front of everyone.
The child who dreamed of architecture or car design.
The one who suffered a herniated disc at the age of 19, dropped out of combat service, gained weight and became addicted to documenting everything he put in his mouth.
With pain she began her way in the kitchen, because she only trusted herself then that she would be able to cook without a single drop of fat.
He says he cooked horrible food then, but also remembers going to restaurants with his grandfather, a tradition he never gave up.
He would study the menu in advance, in detail, so that he would not lose control over quantities and numbers.
And so, the boy who at the age of 14 was told by a psychologist that he suffered from OCD, gave a hand to a boy who suffered from eating disorders, and the two got on a plane to New York.
There, for six months, he spent a huge fortune on restaurants.
From tacos in street restaurants to gourmet food in starred restaurants.
Eats and documents on Instagram under the name Razi Barozi, the one his sister gave him when they were little.
Paid for all this food during sports hours.
"To get clean," he explains, "it's called in the professional parlance. Like bulimics who vomit, that's how I got it all out in training."
For nearly four years, between the ages of 19 and 22, the disorders in the head were what managed the body, which dropped to a weight of 43 kg, while the obsessive preoccupation with food was the cure.
When he returned to Israel, he enrolled in preparatory studies in architecture, and at the same time tried to get a job as a cook.
No one wanted to accept him because he had no experience, until he arrived at "Popina", to the kitchen of chef Oral Kimchi, who recognized his lack of experience as a kind of advantage, and he started working.
Before and after the services he would go to restaurants.
My master's "sect" blew his head off.
To this day, when he talks about the meals he had there, there is a tremor in his words.
He says he was at the service when he heard it was closing, and burst into tears.
At the end of three years, he parted ways with "Pupina", the restaurant where he had a school, which made it clear to him that there was no place for architecture, and Makmahi, the chef who was the most significant practical teacher in his life.
When he announced his departure, he had not yet thought of his own restaurant.
Maybe he'll go specialize in a more specific field like meat, or run someone else's restaurant.
But instead, just before 25, he opened OCD together with Erez Gonzalez, whom he met at Poppina, and with Idan Blumenthal, who then ran Lehm Co.
This trio is at the front, from the beginning until today, with a few more silent partners behind it.
They are all young people who knew how to recognize Rahav's talent and passion.
Erez says it was clear to him that one day Rahav would open a restaurant.
"We talked about it when I left Popina. I told him I was going to work in offices for a while, doing jobs for adults, until he matured."
"I wanted to clarify the things that bother me. I'm not in this profession just for the plate. I know it may sound bad or arrogant, but I'm here because I have a heritage and a culture that I want to pass on. Food is our biggest cultural foundation."
Raz Rahav, photo: Itiel Zion
Things to taste
It is difficult to pin between the opening of OCD and the word ripening.
When I ask what the hell got into his head, where did he get the courage, he says that he felt he had something to give, something big, but he didn't know what exactly yet.
that he doesn't really remember how he decided to open a restaurant.
That this whole period is garaged with him.
"I can't tell you what exactly is happening with the neurons in the body, but I was in absolute high because I won twice - once the weight and the second time the anorexia. Alone. Without professional help. I felt like the king of the world."
Didn't you feel that you lacked knowledge of the processes?
"During the entire first year, I got lost in the processes. It only worked out when I realized that I had to get rid of the me and me thing. At Fox, I got through the first year, and thanks to an amazing partner, crazy partners and staff."
He would not give up anything in the headaches that dictated his path in the world of food.
He didn't learn from cookbooks, not really from food shows either.
The endless experiences in restaurants made the palate the greatest mentor in his life.
"Nor did I study in cooking schools, where they teach you technique and that a tomato goes together with basil, but they don't teach you that an apricot goes together with a monk's hat. These are things you have to taste. And I learned by mouth for half a year."
And on Instagram?
"Of course I didn't grow up in the realms of Instagram, as they like to say. I think we're at the end of this uninteresting Nijus season. I'm part of the Instagram generation, but without a hint of arrogance I say it's not part of me. True, I used it as a marketing platform, but that's all Whatever it is. In my case, there is a lot of self-learning and there is hard work."
He still goes to restaurants abroad, mainly to places where he is connected to those who prepare the food. "Friendship affects the taste.
It's hard for me to enjoy myself in places where I don't appreciate the people, even if the food is amazing." He eats at the "Mechanioda" establishments, at "Norman", "Malgo and Melber", "Weiss", "George and John" - all of them Some of his guys. Specifically about chef David Frankel, with whom he has no special personal relationship, he testifies that he is the best in Israel. "When he came to eat here I was sweating from pressure," he says, "I adore the food he makes.
David is a lift."
Watermelon with goat, photo: Haim Yosef
One, three, two
Six judges populate the table in the new season of "Chef Games" on Channel 13. Moshe Roth, Yossi Shtrit and the regulars Asaf Granit were joined by Tomer Agai from "Santa Katrina", Tamar Cohen Tzedek from "Cucina Hess 4", and Rehab.
A crowded and polite table.
The arguments are not there yet.
The camera is in love with Rahab, when he listens or when he smiles at the contestant he didn't pass, he softly reasons the decision why not to give a knife.
If something in the class is stressing him, it is not apparent.
He articulates clearly and sharply, in sentences that are aware of the end of the thought already when they began.
He remembers one contestant in particular who made him cry because something about a young boy facing criticism reminded him of himself.
And there was also that contestant who prepared some dish and Moshik got into it because she didn't do it right.
And he, the chef who paved his own paths, stood up to protect her.
"Life has taught me that sometimes one, three, two gives a beautiful result. That one, two, three is not always the only way."
He had fun on the shoot, and the viewings in the editing room also went smoothly.
He liked what he saw, heard the hoarseness, the price of years of speaking incorrectly that had grown warts on his vocal cords, which he would soon treat.
Prepared with all his strength to fight so that the publication does not cross his mind.
"I will do everything to not let it happen," he says, "not to let it cost me, and not to let any of this change me."
His biggest fear is privacy.
From the fact that he won't be able to walk quietly from the house to the restaurant, or that on Saturdays, when the boardwalk is busy, he will be prevented from running on the beach.
Just before I say that nothing will happen if he only runs for five days, he, as if answering my thoughts, tells how in the breaks between filming, he and I would go to work out in the gym at the studios, sometimes three times a day.
And I think of the sweat of training that connects these two, for whom sport eases what burdens the body, the heart and the head that doesn't stop working.
Aren't you stressed that the publication will shake your partnership, break the balance within the trio, as happened, for example, in the partnership of "Mechanioda", which led to the retirement of Yossi Elad?
"The chin is strong in our trio. In the group as a group. It may not be easy, but in the end our profession doesn't change, it just gets another layer. We talk about it so much. Both now and before I said yes."
And why did you say yes?
"Because I wanted to discuss the things that bother me. I'm not in this profession just for the plate, for more gel or less gel. I know it may sound bad or arrogant, but I'm here because I have a heritage and a culture that I want to pass on. Food It's our biggest cultural base as humans. The most rooted. The base of all of our bases, whether we admit it or not. Your best memories, even if you say no. Even if they're not related to what you put in your mouth, they'll be related to sitting around The table and for those who were with you. A chef is a creator of culture."
What exactly do you mean by this culture?
"To sum it up, a person who doesn't know how to receive service doesn't know how to give service, a person who doesn't know how to give service doesn't know how to stand in line at the supermarket, a person who doesn't know how to stand at the supermarket will honk in the car like a donkey... these things go through discourse and personal example. At OCD, 850 people eat a month, at Tirtza 1,500, and in order to convey what I want, you need to kick a lot of vectors," he says, and I smile at the choice of an image from the world of physics, which feels like a greeting to his grandfather, Amir Rahav, a mechanical engineer Tab Haim who was his partner in his travels between the city's restaurants, and who most of his career was focused on developing transducers that convert mass into electrical signals.
And did you manage to convey what you want?
"I tried. This is only my first season. Slowly. In the fourth season they won't be able to shut me up."
In the parade of examinees who passed to the judging table, I also passed, one of a multitude of women with one or another connection to the world of food.
The decision to take a chef with an active restaurant left the large group with a single woman.
"Tamar is stunning and a friend, and I am happy that I get to share time with her and learn from her," Rahab replies when I ask if it doesn't bother him, "but she is on this panel as the chef she is and not as a female representation. Of course I would be happy to have equal representation, but unfortunately This also reflects the situation on the ground, that in this field there are more male chefs than female, unfortunately again, who have opened restaurants."
It is hard not to believe the sincerity of the sorrow in his answer.
He has a lot of respect for women.
This is evident in his talk about Dana Logsi, who runs the kitchen, or Or Amir, the restaurant's pastry chef and a partner of the group in "Apui", the bakery they opened nine months ago, whose breads make the mouth thrill every time they come across them in one of the city's restaurants.
"Unfortunately, this reflects the situation on the ground that in this field there are more male chefs than women, unfortunately again, who have opened restaurants."
Raz Rahab and the "Chef Games" judging panel, photo: Micah Lobton
Not looking to get rich
There is infinite respect and appreciation in his words when he talks about his mother, Siglit, who fought cancer for ten years, until she passed away two years ago in September, leaving behind a child. that he deserves benevolent love.
And I wish that from there, from above, she saw her son standing under the canopy with Adi, his lover for the past eight years, whom he met as a waitress at Poppina.
And maybe she also hears when he tells me how he finds peace and balance in her in his crazy world, and how, every Friday, he makes sure to send her flowers.
I see how his chest swells when he talks about Shai, his sister who is four years younger than him, who graduated with honors in biology and now works at Apoi, and will soon start a master's degree in food engineering studies.
The produce of "Apoi" is not yet sold to private customers, but the products of "Tana" - the line of all kinds of fermented foods, sauces and magic powders made by their own hands - are sold in delicatessens or to restaurant customers.
"It's a brand that talks about combining technology and sustainability," Rahav explains to me what is going on in the back room of the restaurant.
"In a restaurant like OCD there is a lot of waste that should have gone to the trash. But trash is bad. It goes back to the room of Shalom Simcha DTLash, who studied for four years at the University of Slow Food and is the king of the world.
It is what it is," he says as my finger wanders between a gorgeous buckwheat-fermented miso and an olive oil jam that would make any cheese fly. A batch of celeriac pequila sauce they served last year left them with crazy amounts of dregs, so they added sugar that turned into alcohol, which is now Vinegar. Oil from nut scraps, miso from cocoa and coconut, and magic powder full of umami that is produced from other vegetables that have been dried and ground, are some of the treasures of existence that continue on, even to the fields.
"I buy a lot of second-class vegetables, vegetables that no one wants just because they're not pretty. It's good for me, it's good for them and it's good financially," he says, continuing to describe the raw materials that move in a circle from the restaurant kitchen to Tana, from the bakery to "You will."
"It also has an economic meaning that the sauces don't cost me any more money," he tells me from the office upstairs, to which we were banished because the service was starting.
"It's not that we don't like money," points out Gonzalez, the partner, who is immediately clear that he is the practical side of the partnership.
The one that every creator would ask for himself.
"We want and know how to make money, but there is a difference between that and being pigs. We are not looking for a way to get rich, otherwise the prices here would be much higher."
"I work very hard and I have no problem being rewarded for it or taking credit," Rahav tells me before parting.
"I got where I got thanks to me and thanks to my teams, partners and guests, and thanks to the recognition I received. This place, for the hype it created, could be more accurate - from the waiters' clothing to the precision of the work so that they don't break dishes."
You're 31, everything happens so fast.
Do you get stressed when they say the best?
Do you have any fear of success?
"On the contrary. I have a fear of failure. But telling yourself that you are the best is for losers. I know that I am in a marathon and not a sprint. I know that tactics and breathing space are needed and that it is long. I know that I am only in the first quarter of the course and that there are still three quarters of a run ahead of me."
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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