11-03-2013
The Machneyuda restaurant in Jerusalem, Israel, 10 beit yaakov 10 street, tel. +972.053.8094897. Run by 3 young chefs, it’s a "market restaurant": dishes are prepared directly on the table with the early produce from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market
Jerusalem is the typical religious tourist destination, a compulsory one for all those who are in search of history, sacred places, faith, with a multitude of people who stand in front of the Wailing Wall or who walk in silence, charmed by the immense spaces of the Holy Sepulchre. These tourists are certainly less preoccupied with the purely gastronomic facet which for us at Identità Golose, while travelling in the land of Israel though without wishing to confuse the sacred with the profane, cannot be put on the back burner.
While Tel Aviv, by the sea, is the centre of the most modern and young Judaism, of beach fun, surfing and wild nights in a thousand bars, Jerusalem offers its visitors a decisively more self-controlled and serious image. This said, some elements of great interest, when it comes to food and local produce, aren’t missing. You can immediately notice it while visiting the excellent Mahane Yehuda market (in the homonymous neighbourhood), in a fun area of the city where ethnic groups, as well as spices, fruits and vegetables, are put together mixing all at once echoes of Kurdish, Jewish, Arab, Lebanese and more generally Middle-Eastern flavours and aromas, but with lots of North African influences.
Halva
Close to the market you cannot miss the chance to attend the show offered by the kitchen of the Machneyuda restaurant, run by three creative, fun and young chefs: Uri Navon (previously at the starred L’Escargot in London), Yossi Elad (an Italian cuisine fanatic and an expert baker) and Asaf Granit (a globetrotter chef with a touch of France in his soul). The result is a market restaurant where in one corner fruits and vegetables are sold, like in a shop, and in the other there’s the kitchen, overlooking the dining room and offering the show of the continuous bustle of the chefs. A large table allows to set up the dishes straight on the table and this is how these preparations, destined to become totally improvised culinary artworks, are created. The chefs get out of the kitchen and assemble the dish right in front of the clients, while the music encourages to dance at the centre of the room.
Fish carpaccio with pomegranates
The establishments, tastes and cooking personalities in Europe, as seen by Gualtero Spotti
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