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Jaffa: Noa Bistro

14 Hazorfim St., (Nir Zook Plaza) , Phone: 03-5184668
www.cordelia.co.il

Reviewed by: David from NY, review #3531

When: 2010

A big disappointment... it was as if an unskilled grade school child was in the kitchen

Directions: Around the corner from Nir Zook's other restaurants in old Jaffa

Nir Zook is a household name in Israel. He's a chef who regularly appears on Israeli TV and has 3 well-respected restaurants in Jaffa. Well, perhaps we just timed it wrong, but we had a less-than-mediocre lunch here in June 2010.

I'm guessing that, regardless of whether Mr. Zook actually cooks at this restaurant, the person/people he entrusts it to were either away or on drugs. There's no other way I can explain the unseasoned, badly cooked food we had here. I ordered his take on Shakshuka, an egg, tomato, etc dish very popular in Israel. What arrived was a few poached eggs in a watery tomato thing. The dish totally didn't come together, it had virtually no seasoning - in short, it was just plain bad. My partner had an equally inedible meal. I thought about complaining, but the waitstaff seemed to be very inexperienced and I assumed that things wouldn't change. So we just ate what we could and left. One more thing... looking up at an interior wall was a display of red and white flowers that spelled, in English, a word that many would be horrified to read. I asked the waiter about it and he said that it was Mr. Zook's doing - IMO, not a good idea. I have no trepidation about curse words - I use them all of the time. But many English speakers would find it unacceptable to see that up on the wall. A big disappointment.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

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