The Palomar: An exhilarating experience

A version of Israel's hippest restaurant may be the most interesting restaurant experience in London right now, says David Sexton
In your face: chefs prepare the food at the zinc bar
Adrian Lourie
David Sexton14 December 2017

Here’s such an interesting new opening. Currently the trendiest restaurant in Jerusalem, maybe in all Israel, is Machneyuda in the Mahane Yehuda food market. Spearheading the fashion for serving Palestinian dishes in high-end Israeli restaurants, it’s become a key destination for visitors to the city over the past few years. Now here’s a version of Machneyuda right here in Soho to save us the trip.

In London such fusing of food cultures is familiar enough already from Ottolenghi and the Ottolenghi knock-offs too. Here it’s primarily about discovering new tastes, an uncomplicated pleasure (although maybe Guardian-readers also get a little fillip of PC self-congratulation from it?).

Over there, in Israel, such crossovers mean much more. For example, the chef at the Tel Aviv market restaurant, The Basta, serving Palestinian-influenced food, says: “It’s important to show respect to the culture this food came from — I don’t separate my political views from my cooking.” This trend is well-established now in Tel Aviv but not so common in conservative Jerusalem — and Machneyuda evidently (I haven’t been to Israel for ages) makes the most of being a bit radical and youthful, with a noisy, informal atmosphere.

The Palomar, which has just opened on the Chinatown side of Shaftesbury Avenue, is Machneyuda’s sister restaurant, owned by London-based DJ Layo Paskin, who created the much-missed club The End and its offshoot bar AYA, and his sister Zoe, who used to manage Hawksmoor Spitalfields, in collaboration with chefs Assaf Granit, Yossi Elad and Uri Navon from Machneyuda. Tomer Amedi from Machneyuda is head chef.

If the idea of going to an Israeli restaurant in the middle of Soho still seems a bit peculiar, you forget all about that the moment you’re through the door. The Palomar (apparently a non-specific name, vaguely evoking the Med) is already packed, buzzing, exhilarated.

You’re immediately into an open kitchen, with a 16-seater zinc-topped bar from which you can watch the cooks working away theatrically — with another, marble “raw bar” to the other side. These would be the best, the liveliest places to eat here but they can’t be booked — unlike the clubby, 35-cover dining room at the back, decked out with leathery banquettes.

The menu comes on as small dishes for sharing yet again — but they’re not small. Kubaneh (£4) is a Yemeni Jewish yeast bread, traditionally baked in a pot at low temperature overnight for Sabbath breakfast. A sweet and buttery mound, almost brioche-like in texture, it was served warm, with little pots of intensely flavoured “velvet tomato” purée (like a gazpacho) and fine tahini as dips: different and delicious. A starter already!

But we went nevertheless for the “Daily 6 — assorted mezze from Jerusalem & beyond” (£12). These were also very good value, vegetarian- friendly, a series of sparklingly fresh little portions all served in different dishes. There was an oily aubergine salad with some chilli sparking it up; lentils, perfectly cooked and not mushy, enlivened by hazelnuts, mint and yoghurt; some kale with salty feta; sweet roasted beetroot with tangy goat’s cheese; more aubergine, cooked soft on the grill, puréed with some tahini into a kind of moutabel, flecked with pomegranate seeds... It was almost the kind of food that Cranks would have liked to have served back in the day, if only it could.

The signature dish here, the one you should be sure to come to the bar to try even if you don’t investigate any further, is “Polenta Jerusalem style”, served in a kilner jar, smallish as a starter (£5) or larger (go for the larger) as a main (£8.50). It’s a knockout dish, crazily rich — so far from being a staple carb as in northern Italy, the polenta here is so creamy it’s almost a sauce in itself, a mayonnaise substitute. Layered on top is a rich mushroom ragout, some soft cooked asparagus, Parmesan and lashings of truffle oil, giving it a powerfully truffly aroma, one that you always seek and rarely find. Technically, this would be easy enough to duplicate at home (there’s a recipe for it on Martha Stewart) but you’d have to steel yourself to cook the polenta in large amounts of thick cream and milk, not water.

From the Raw Bar, “Landing catch raw fish ‘Uri style’” (£7.50) proved to be salmon, in “a cured onion and ginger vinaigrette”, also containing some radish, apple, cucumber and coriander, fancifully served in a metal casket with ruffled silky lining. The fish was good but over-fussed, the vinaigrette a touch sweet (overall, the meal was quite sweet) — running up against my prejudice, unshaken despite constant stress-testing, that there is no better way of serving raw fish than as plain sashimi.

“Pork Belly Tajine with Ras el Hanout, dried apricots and Israeli couscous” (£12) is a dish that has been developed by Tomer Amedi especially for the London restaurant, perhaps as a delicate hint that its cuisine is confined neither by kosher nor halal restrictions. The unctuous belly came in big chunks, sweet, sticky, richly spiced, with a bit of preserved fig too, on a couscous made of little pasta grains — another dish delivering a big hit.

We liked the Persian oxtail stew with chickpeas and turnips (£12.50) less — stringy, in a surprisingly watery juice, a little bitterly herbed — and wished we’d tried other dishes appearing on tables around us, the seared scallops, say, or labenah tortellini. However, the tahini ice cream (£7) was astonishingly sweet and overpowering all over again, like a turbocharged dulce de leche.

The drinks list here is short and rewarding (no Israeli wine listed, superb Macon £32, inventive cocktails £7-£8), the service enthused.

Altogether, the price is low for such an experience. Is it really a match for Machneyuda? A couple we chatted to who have an apartment in Tel Aviv and know the Israeli restaurant scene thought so and were already planning to come back. We overheard others mentioning Ottolenghi and comparing it favourably to Nopi. It’s already so popular you might not easily get in. Well worth it, though — maybe the most interesting restaurant experience out there just now.

Open for dinner Mon-Sat 5.30pm-12.30am. Open for lunch from next Monday, Mon-Sat noon-2.30pm, Sun noon-5pm. About £100 for two.

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