For a weekend trip with very limited time, I wanted to find a place that really stood out. Zahav is that kind of place. Here, they serve the cuisine of Israel, which is much more than the Jewish food you can find at some New York deli. The cuisine has much deeper and complex roots than that. Israel and the surrounding area known as the Levant has been conquered repeatedly over history by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks among others. All of these cultures left their influences on the food.
The menu at Zahav consists of mezze or small plates, showing some similarities to its Mediterranean neighbors Greece and Turkey. The menu has To get an idea of the food they serve here, I go with one of there tasting menus, Tayim.
Hummus Masbacha with Laffa
Bread: it must be a part of the meal. But this bread is awesome. It's crusty on the outside and slightly spiced with zatar. And it's great for scooping up hummus. This is not the packaged stuff from the supermarket. This ubiquitous chickpea, tahina, and garlic spread is made in house and served warm with olive oil. Masbacha is served with warm chickpeas with tahina on top. It's really rich and delicate. I mean, it had me at olive oil. Olive oil is one of my biggest obsessions. So much so, that I can drink this stuff straight up.
Salatim
This is the highlight of the meal and it's all vegetables. This is a spread of 6 different salads with varying flavors and tastes.
There was Moroccan spiced carrots, green beans with olive oil and harissa, and Israeli cucumber and tomato salad. The carrots pack quite a punch with the heat while the beans had a hint of heat.
Finally, there's tabbouleh, salt roasted beets with tahina, and twice cooked eggplants. The tabbouleh contains kale, parsley, and bulgar wheat. Personally, I really liked the beets. They are mashed and mixed with tahina, or sesame paste. The eggplant dish is very complex, containing red peppers, lemon, onion, and garlic. Sadly, all these great ingredients were ruined by my most hated food ever. Every element could be tasted, especially the eggplant.
Right away there's a ton of food that I'm scarfing down with bread and I started to get full. Yes, veggies are getting the best of me. At this point, I was about to call it a night. The salami, laffa, and hummus would be a meal for any person in a decent state of mind. It wasn't until the first mezze came in that I realized, I haven't had any meat yet.
House Smoked Sable
This is cold smoked fish on top of challah bread with an egg inside. The waiter slices the bread in half, letting the oozing yolk leak out on to the plate. It's sort of like a reverse French toast. Mix that with the smoked fish and you've got a perfect Jewish breakfast.
Yemenite Beef Stew
This is not your ordinary beef stew with potatoes. They use beef short rib and harissa for heat. This broth is spicy but light.
Lamb Merguez
This consists of spiced lamb sausage with oyster mushrooms and pepitas. The sausage itself is very intensely flavored, which is a good thing there are the mushrooms to mellow it out and cleanse the palate. Some of that flavor comes from the charcoal that the sausage is cooked over.
Vanilla Custard
Being quite stuffed mostly from the appetizers, I decided to finish with something on the lighter side. So here's a little custard with poached bananas, watermelon cubes, pistachios, and cardamom seeds. My first impression of this is that it looks like a deconstructed yogurt parfait. You got your yogurt (custard), some fruit (bananas and watermelon), and granola (cardamom and pistachio). But obviously, this blows any parfait out the door.
There is one dish here that looks really good, but didn't get the chance to try: roasted lamb shoulder with pomegranate and chickpeas. Once upon a time, it was only available as a part of one of their pre fixe courses. Now, it's first come first serve. It's usually meant for 3-4 people to eat, so downing it myself wouldn't be the smartest thing to do. But hey, there is always next time.
How often do you see an Israeli restaurant? Almost never. This is truly a unique dining experience. The diversity of the cuisine accurately portrays the diaspora of the country.
237 St. James Place
Philadelphia, PA 19106
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