Toko's varied menu includes meat, fish and a nice selection of wines and cocktails
My wife and I have this ongoing problem. While she is a big fan of sushi, I believe rice with a little bit of fish cannot be considered as food. A few nights ago, we decided on a dinner and a movie night at the Rishon LeZyion new Yes Planet. Picking a film was the easiest part. Getting there was no problem at all; Yes Planet even has a huge parking lot. All that was left was choosing a restaurant. Truth be told, we solved this problem quickly. Toko restaurant offers an Asian and South American menu, which includes a nice variety for me and for her. The happy South American decor, the nice music and Chef Nitzan Raz's promising menu were a great start.
Toko's varied menu includes meat, fish and a nice selection of wines and cocktails. We already chose 2 cocktails when the waiter offered we would try the restaurant's wine of the month, Assemblage and Altitude by Barkan. Both were really good, but we were already eager to have our cocktails: Mojito With plenty of berries, and Tokolada composed by Van Gogh vodka, coconut, yogurt liquor, mango, pineapple, Elderflower syrup and orange juice.
We started out with Asian cucumber salad, which was fresh and tasty. For NIS18 we got a mountain of sprouts, cucumbers and bok choy decorated with black sesame, miso and garlic. We continued with shrimp popcorn (NIS52, which also comes in a chicken version): a nice amount of shrimps in crunchy tempura, on a bed of lettuce in Asian vinaigrette, this dish really made a good impression. And for our last starter, we had the beef Carpaccio (NIS52) – thin sliced meat, soaked in a beautiful dressing and decorated with a lot of mushrooms, cashew nuts and pickled pepper.
After all of these we decided to switch to the sushi section that I made a commitment to help with. Fortunately, I was surprised. The Toko Roll was filled with salmon, chili pepper, red onions, warm mozzarella cheese, spicy mayonnaise and onion chips – a surprisingly delicious combination of tastes. You'd think a classic roll of salmon and avocado would not be too surprising, but no. This one had a very thin layer of rice and a huge amount of fish that emphasized the clean taste of produce. And our final one – New California – was hardcore sushi with crabs, shrimps, tobiko eggs and a very dominant taste of sea –this one requires certain taste, and is definitely not for everyone.
By now we were pigging out, really, but in view of the seafood success, we tried one last fusion dish of seafood gnocchi – mussels, shrimps and calamari with cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, cauliflower, asparagus and mint with high quality gnocchi in great curry sauce.
We always have a separate stomach for desserts, and so we ordered the pistachio kadaif that was served with berries sorbet, which was nice. In comparison, the chocolate soufflé that got to our table exactly 12 minutes after we had ordered it, was so hot coming out of the oven, we loved it.
Will we come back? For sure, there are so many dishes to try. In the meantime, we just wait in line for our movie tickets.
