Veteran Tel Aviv culinary enthusiasts will be forgiven and other professional facial twists will be forgiven, but the biggest news in Chef Assaf Stern's injury to three months of pop-up tasting dinner at the Market House Hotel in Jaffa (from the Atlas boutique hotel chain) after the closure of the legendary Mesa restaurant he led, is kashrut.
There are almost no foodies in Israel and around the world who do not know Chef Stern. Beyond being Massa's chef, his distinguished resume goes through working in the kitchen alongside Chef Moshik Roth at the two-Michelin-star Moshik restaurant in Amsterdam, through "Catit" and Chef Meir Adoni's "Eatery", to the Italian restaurant Eviteriu. A well-known and successful Israeli chef who returns to work in Israel is always nice, but a chef of Stern's caliber who strikes specifically to create a kosher tasting meal for a limited time? Well, gospel - have we already said?
Chef Assaf Stern,
The kashrut-observant community in Israel has long since successfully gone through its maturation process from searching for kosher and satisfying places, to searching for the restaurant that plates the dishes so that they can tell synagogue friends about them.
Stern's pop-up presents a new test for kosher observants in terms of perception: you don't come to a tasting meal for a week, you come to taste and admire new culinary combinations that we have not yet encountered, certainly in the restrictive kosher world. For the traditional audience, there are rare to no opportunities to taste kosher dishes created by a chef who starred in a three-Michelin-star restaurant, and when such an opportunity arises, it is well worth not to miss it.
The Market House Hotel, housed in a restored stone house on the historic Beit Hashel Street, which was Jaffa's first hotel and hospitality street in the 19th century, certainly justified the splendor and elegant splendor of Stern's dishes. Added to the location was a jazzy and well decorated atmosphere. We tasted the 10 course meal created by the chef and let's start with a spoiler - it was just great and meticulous until the last bite. Definitely met its high standard.
Taste and admire the combinations, photo: Amir Menachem
First came small and precise appetizers of beetroot meringue, root crispy, cardamom cookies and ceviche. They gave a beauty of introduction to the fish dishes that followed. A dish of tuna tartare was then placed on the table. It included touches of beef yogurt with bright orange shushka pepper cream and slightly tingling. The dish came with mushrooms and puffed burgle grains ("bulgur puff") sprinkled on top. Thus, even though it was based on gentleness and calm, it managed to stir the palate and still maintain delicacy and a lot of respect for Tuna, who was not drowned in a variety of flavors that threatened to divert attention from her.
Another dish at the meal was muslin carfalach, which looks like an abstract representation with plum sauce and goat yogurt that was undoubtedly a complex and tingling surprise. It consisted of a great mousse of white fish and ingredients like potato, thyme and brown butter and it must be said, only chefs like Stern would allow themselves to place a single, meaty, cheeky okra with saffron in the center.
Krapflach,
We also enjoyed dishes like tuna tartare with pickled shimeji (mushrooms) and a wonderful root salad or wild sea fish smoked with pine needles and threw us momentarily from sitting in a fancy lobby to nibbling and figuring bones on a riverbank.
In our opinion, ten dishes (including dessert) were definitely a decent selection and rich enough to justify a not cheap evening for two (485 shekels, not including wines), including the option to match the meal with four glasses of wine for an additional 80 shekels.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us