If you can stand the heat…

More than 70 Tel Aviv eateries are opening up their kitchens to the public for the first-ever ‘Open Restaurants’.

By AMY SPIRO
Popina's chef Orel Kimchi (photo credit: AMY SPIRO)
Popina's chef Orel Kimchi
(photo credit: AMY SPIRO)
Do you want to learn the ingredients and methods that go into high-end ice cream? What about tricks for plating food at one of Tel Aviv’s finest restaurants? Or experience a two-hour pizza “marathon” at one of the hippest pizzerias in town? You probably can’t pass up the opportunity to enjoy an intensive whiskey sampling and lesson from the experts.
For the first time ever, all these activities and many, many more will be open to the public this weekend in the kitchens of some of Tel Aviv’s hottest eateries, from the famed 24-hour hot spot Brasserie to the tiny Egyptianinspired bistro Yahaloma or specialty chocolate shop Ika.
The project, titled “Open Restaurants” (Misadot Mebifnim), is the brainchild of entrepreneur Merav Oren, who said she dreamed up the idea while recovering from breast cancer in 2012.
“After I went for chemotherapy sessions, I would go out with my husband to restaurants to try to relax,” she said. As she visited a variety of restaurants across the city, she started to wonder “what was going on behind the scenes. Is it really as easy as it seems to turn out these beautiful dishes?” Oren, CEO of Agora, a company that specializes in projects held in public spaces, reached out to partner with Aviva Levinson, who brought the international “Houses From Within” program to Israel, which opens up unique private homes and spaces across the country to the public once a year. Levinson first brought the idea – which originated in London in 1992 and is now found in more than a dozen countries – to Israel in 2007, and has run annual events in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem ever since.
Instead of opening homes, Oren and Levinson convinced chefs and restaurant owners to open their kitchens to the public, who get an inside look at the eateries and the chance to pick the brains of the top chefs in the country. The program is organized by Agora in conjunction with the Tel Aviv Municipality and Maximum-Tel Aviv.
People get to “enter the kitchens, meet their chefs and learn their secrets,” said Oren. They get to “peek in to areas that are usually hidden from the public eye.”
Over 100 varied activities for eager foodies are available at more than 70 eateries across the city. At the R2M bakery, participants can become acquainted with its different production stations and the vast logistics behind the operation, before partaking in a course in making breakfast pastries with chef Ram Zilberman.
At Haj Kahil in Jaffa, chef Omar Iluwan will explain how to take “cooking traditions that are thousands of years old and give them a contemporary twist.”
The guests will cook freekeh with fruit and lamb sirloin; chicken with onions and sumac on a Iraqi pita; authentic Arabic fattoush salad; modern eggplant salad; and malabi.
NOT MUCH into cooking? There’s a nightlife and beer-tasting tour of Tel Aviv. Vegetarian? Learn how to cook three of the vegan options on the menu of Orna and Ella. Big fan of Master Chef? One of the judges, Haim Cohen, offers a tour of the kitchen at his new eatery Yaffo-Tel Aviv, where he will explain how he turned his dream into reality and built a restaurant to his exact specifications.
Nir Zook offers two different experiences at his famed Cordelia restaurant. If you’re an early riser, you could join him at 5 a.m. for a trip to the wholesale market near Tzrifin, to pick up fruits and vegetables and learn how to make the best selections: “How to choose an eggplant, how to know if an artichoke has a good heart, which tomatoes are suited for which recipes, and more.”
Participants then return to the restaurant to drink espresso, eat warm bread and cook the fruits and vegetables they just bought.
Not a morning person? You could join Zook for a workshop on the “tricks of presentation,” and learn how to create restaurant-worthy plates.
“It’s interesting to me to see my personal experience through the eyes of somebody else,” Zook told Walla News ahead of the project’s opening. “It’s fun to meet new people, drink with new people, walk around the shuk at 5 a.m.
with them.”
Even Blackout, the restaurant attached to the Nalaga’at Center for the deaf-blind in Jaffa, is opening its doors – though not its lights – for the project. Visitors will enjoy the typical five-course dinner in complete darkness, including a discussion with the chefs on how they tailor the cooking to the pitch-black experience.
Categories on the website include those in English, those suitable for kids and a few of the spots which are kosher.
Of the 1,200 tickets available for the weekend’s events, some sold out within days of the site being open, said Oren.
Last week, a group of journalists got a firsthand preview of the project, with chef Oren Kimchi of Popina restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Neveh Tzedek neighborhood.
Kimchi, who won the international S. Pellegrino Cooking Cup in 2011 for chefs under age 30, opened Popina last year, after working as a chef at Cavalier in Jerusalem and Joel Robuchon in Paris.
Popina is clearly ideally suited to the idea of Open Restaurants, since it is built around an open kitchen, situated in the center of the dining space, to “allow diners to engage in dialogue with the chef and his team. The kitchen, which is the beating heart of any restaurant, because of the design concept of the restaurant, becomes a significant part of the dining experience,” according to its website.
Our experience began with an exploration of the Carmel Market, a 10-minute walk from Popina. Kimchi stopped at his favorite herb store, his vegetable stand and finally his fish supplier; sharing his tips and tricks along the way.
“Ninety percent of the products here are Israeli grown,” said Kimchi, passing around samples of micro-basil, cilantro and chives. “Some of these things – like avocado, asparagus – you couldn’t buy fresh in Israel even a few years ago,” he said. “But Israeli farmers are advancing every year.”
Returning to the restaurant, Kimchi began to prepare the corvina fish in the style his restaurant is designed upon: five different methods of cooking. Popina’s menu is divided by the method of preparation: pickling, steaming, baking, roasting and slow cooking. At the end of the demonstrations, participants go to taste the final dishes: “gin and tonic” corvina tartar; steamed corvina with a martini; corvina baked with root vegetables, roasted corvina over a bed of risotto; and slow-cooked corvina with artichokes and saffron.
Oren said that to the best of her knowledge, this is the “world premiere,” of any such Open Restaurants program ever held globally.
Their aim, she said, is to go global, but for now, they’re sticking to Tel Aviv and the hope of making this a regular event in the city.
For more information and to purchase tickets: www.open-restaurants.co.il