DINNER AT RAGU

  Category: Restaurants

Last night, we had dinner at Ragu- a newish restaurant in the German colony, located at 41 Beit Lechem Road, Jerusalem.

The restaurant is quite tiny. In the summer, it is possible to eat outside making it much larger. However, last night the place was packed- every table was filled. At the table next to us sat United States security officers with the little curly things coming out of their ears. We looked across the room and sure enough, there was Senator Joe Lieberman and his family enjoying their time together.

We wish we could tell you that the restaurant was packed because the food was so good. That, however, would be somewhat less than accurate.

The presentation of the food is spectacular- would that the food were as good as the presentation. In other words, hey you guys, concentrate more on the food and less on the plate decorations.

The minestrone soup was a thin, watery soup with beans and meat balls and not much else. No pasta, no chunks of tomato, and no mix of beans- just one kind of bean. The portobello mushrooms were tasty but not much to write home about. The grilled veggies were quite tasty. Son in law Yoav ordered some sort of Italian fish appetizer that turned out to be lox in oil covered with capers.

For dinner, there were steaks all around. The fillet steak was not cooked anywhere close to the way we had requested, but after waiting over one hour for the main dinner to appear, there was no way we were going to send it back. In addition, the steak itself was not at all aged- it was young and entirely not soft. The entrecote was good and daughter Tali said it was quite tasty (served in a pomegranate sauce), but not a particularly good piece of meat- again, too fresh and not aged.

The other two steaks (there were four of us) were also pretty much run of the mill pieces of meat.

The steaks came with a very artistically sliced and fanned baby green squash, one slice of white potato and several of sweet potato, three Brussel sprouts and one sprig of broccoli. But, it sure did look pretty!

The service was slow. We ordered a foccacia and it came after the appetizer. It took over one hour for the main course to appear. By the time we finished the main course, there was no way that we were going to order dessert- it was just too late. Interestingly, the waiter never asked us if we wanted tea or coffee or dessert, he simply brought the bill.

All in all, the company was great. The food was not so great, but the dishes looked spectacular. The price was certainly good. For four of us, including two wines and two sodas, the bill came to 576 NIS. Not bad. We used our Eluna coupon and got 10% off. The bill came to about $100 for the four of us. We would gladly pay more, even, but the food and the service would have to improve quite a bit.