For two years, Naifeh searched for a place to open her own restaurant.
She walked around Tel Aviv - Jaffa where she lives for the last few years, until finally it happened.
Something about the stone floor at the entrance to the space where the "Bellini" restaurant once operated in the Suzan Dellal complex in Neve Tzedek gave her a "feeling of home".
"I saw a lot of places, but something in my gut told me that it still wasn't the right thing," she shares.
"This stone reminded me of Yerka, the village where I grew up."
Naifa restaurant, photo: Haim Yosef
To her credit, she managed to bring home - the Druze settlement in the north of the country - to the plates, the smell, the atmosphere, and even the walls of the space where she is opening her first restaurant in about a month: "Naifa".
Ima, Afaf, makes sure to prepare every day a variety of different pitas for the place, and this "something in the stomach" - playing there and sizzling in the pots as a recurring motif, proves itself to be accurate in the meantime.
Naifeh's food is full, photo: Haim Yosef
You can say, Mola arrives "cooked" to this new high point in her career.
In recent years, the 33-year-old young woman from Rika has established herself as one of the most respected minds in the Israeli culinary world, after having come a long way, including through the "Jaffa-Tel Aviv" route, the participation in the "Chef Games" program and the meals for which it was not possible to get a free seat at L28.
Now, according to her, she is fulfilling her big dream and opening her first restaurant, without partners and without investors, completely on her own.
Chunks of crispy fish, photo: Haim Yosef
"I want to give my guests a different culinary experience, rich in flavors and unique culinary combinations and above all, above all, hospitality," she says and serves us with her own hands the new dishes she created - from which the aromas of age-old traditions rise. Her food at the new place is based on the culinary line of the kitchen Shami with traditional cooking techniques and touches from Europe.The culinary experience at the place is a combination of a journey between past and present, the magic of human warmth and gastronomic precision.
Freaky gnocchi in "Naifa", photo: Haim Yosef
The menu is focused on sharing and among the dishes where you can enjoy alongside a glass of local wine the "Yarka's Kobjana" dish of beef sheitel tartar and bulgur with arysa and lettuce, made with grammar and elegance, with delicate flavors, with a relatively light and airy texture;
"Melpof" of stuffed bloody cabbage - thinly rolled and served on a slightly sweetened reduced beef stock, which is accompanied by confit garlic and broken sahug that add the castor;
Or pieces of very crispy, very crunchy fish, fried in a semolina batter - which are stuffed to eat inside a crispy Druze pita stuffed with caramelized onions, leaf salad and spicy chili sauce.
Among the desserts, we tasted an incredibly delicious savosa that starts with a crackling texture of a layer of caramelized sugar and goes through a creamy semolina cake, mellow and soft, almost mushy in a good way.
The prices of the dishes will be added later when the restaurant opens, they explained to us on the spot.
Restaurant address: Yehiali 4 Tel Aviv. The opening of the restaurant in about a month.
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