HACHATZER RESTAURANT

Last night we had a true gustatory adventure. We went to Hachatzer (located at 7 Derech Beit Lechem) and enjoyed the tasting menu. At NIS 170, the menu is well priced and is a most amazing meal.

They begin by bringing the obligatory 12 little plates of different salads and freshly baked and still hot bread. The trick is to not fill up on the bread or the salads! Some of those salads were tabouli, two different egg plant dishes, lentils, matbucha, beet salad, batata, peppers and chumus.

If you order the tasting menu, everyone at the table must order it also (to prevent cheating). You never know what exactly you will get as it is up to the chef’s whim at the moment you order and by how appreciative you are (the waiter tells the chef).

We began with chopped liver (pate, but not foie gras) served with figs under a sweet sauce and crisp bread crackers. The taste was sublime- the combination of figs, sweet sauce and liver was incredible.

The second course was carpaccio. The razor thin meat was excellent! One small complaint- they used just a tad too much balsamic vinegar. Nonetheless, we really enjoyed the dish.

The third course was fried spinal cord. Sounds yuchy, no? The taste is incredible. The meat is served pinwheel style and the taste is fantastic. It is a light colored meat, almost white. There is no way to describe the taste, except to say that we didn’t know what it was until after we ate. Probably a good thing!

The next course was an old fave of ours, one that we can no longer get in the USA: miltz (spleen). The miltz were actually not dry for the most part. The spices were a bit unusual, but the miltz themselves were taam gan eden!

Course #5 was an eggplant dish. We do not know what it was, but it was very large blocks of eggplant served with a nice sauce and covered with sunflower sprouts. The sprouts were most enjoyable, and the eggplant, somewhat redolent of eggplant baladi, was quite good. We gobbled it all up.

The sixth course was fish kabobs. First they cleared our plates, silverware and napkins and then they began the fish courses. The fish kabobs were like little hamburgers made on the grill. The taste was just a bit on the spicy side and the kabobs were perfect. The combination of fish and spice was perfect.

The seventh course was fried whole little fishes. Uh, not our favorite. Too many bones in little tiny fried fishes. The taste was good, but the work involved in removing the head and the bones was more than we bargained for. Our dinner companion loved the dish, so we let him eat as much as he wanted. Watching him eat the fish heads, eyes and all, was a bit strange for us.

Course eight was Chreimeh- Moroccan fish balls in a sweet and pungent sauce. Large balls of fish are cooked in this sublime sauce. Talk about an amazing dish! Holy mackerel- it was MMMMM, good.

Course nine was beef chips and green salad. Before they served the beef, we once again got new plates and silverware. The salad was quite good. The beef was tasty, but way too salty. Neither one of us ate much of it due to the overpowering saltiness of the dish.

Course number ten was more beef We had Asado. It is a South American dish made with rib meat. Ours was huge pieces of flanken. The meat was quite tender and the sauce was sweet and totally seductive. Along with the Asado, they served strips of entrecote served with salt on the side and a small bowl of poupon mustard. The meat itself was cooked with only peppercorns on it. The taste was unbelievable. We finished off the entrecote strips in no time. The meat was soft and moist.

The flanken was quite good, but the portion was so big and we had eaten so much, that most of the Asado went home with us in a bag.

Dessert was hot lava chocolate cake with pareve ice cream and three sorbets. The three sorbets were supposed to be mango, coconut and passion fruit. Someone made a mistake and gave us pareve vanilla ice cream instead of the coconut. No biggie! We loved the passion fruit sorbet.

As the time flew by, close to two hours were taken up with this feast. Had we been a table full of people, dinner would have been at least three hours. The waiter was fantastic and he and several other staff came by our table every so often to ask how we were enjoying the meal.

What can we say? TOTAL GUSTATORY DECADENCE. TOTAL GUSTATORY DELIGHT.

We may have to eat again in two or three days…………..