The latest haute restaurant arrivals in this city, Israel’s cultural and commercial capital, prove that you really can teach old chefs new tricks. Opened in the fall and designed by husband-and-wife duo Alon Baranowitz and Irene Kronenberg, Jonathan Roshfeld’s seafront Herbert Samuel and Haim Cohen’s city-center Deca provide a much-needed dose of maturity to the country’s still-ascendant culinary culture.
Herbert Samuel
Beit Gibor, 6 Koifman St.; 972-3/516-6516
Pedigree
Roshfeld’s eponymous (and now shuttered) restaurant helped launch Israel’s foodie revolution a decade ago.
Space
Set on the bottom floors of a ho-hum office building, the restaurant capitalizes on its waterfront location with walls of windows.
Table to Book
The ones just beyond the main entrance provide the best people watching. (Top-floor seating gives ocean views but also faces an unsightly gas station.)
Cuisine
Mod Mediterranean
Perfect Dish
Whole-wheat pappardelle with chestnuts and shredded short ribs
Scene
Tel Aviv high-techies and their visitors, society ladies, design-world scenesters, and embassy staffers
Neighborhood
Directly across from the sea and minutes from Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv’s hot SoHo-style hood
Deca
10 Ha’Ta’asiya St.; 972-3/562-9900
Pedigree
Cohen, now a TV celeb, ran Keren in the nineties, the kitchen of choice for ministers and the newly moneyed.
Space
A former workshop, Deca comprises a series of intimate areas; a see-through cage of beautiful Italian terracotta latticework surrounds the main dining room.
Table to Book
Any of those directly under that terracotta scrim
Cuisine
Genre-defying, all-dairy gourmet kosher—a first in secular Tel Aviv
Perfect Dish
Grilled sea bass with quinoa ragout and beetroot salad
Scene
Kosher gourmands, from local diamond merchants to observant Parisians and New Yorkers
Neighborhood
The city’s gritty eastern industrial zone, close to the all-hours bar, club, and lounge district
