As you can probably guess by its title, Meat & Eat's menu offers a small selection of dishes, which includes fresh meat cuts dry-aged on the premises, fish, taboon-baked pastries, and some vegetable dishes for the vegetarian crowd
A few months ago a young sister to the kosher meat restaurant from Tel Aviv – Meat & Eat – was opened at the old train station site in Jerusalem. As you can probably guess by its title, Meat & Eat's menu offers a small selection of dishes, which includes fresh meat cuts dry-aged on the premises, fish, taboon-baked pastries, and some vegetable dishes for the vegetarian crowd.
It was a stormy night in Jerusalem, and so we were drawn to sit right next to the taboon oven. The Jerusalem version of Eat & Meat does have a covered exterior area, but with less than 50c outside, sitting there was out of the question. The interior part of the restaurant is large and impressive, with high industrial ceiling, a bar and several sitting areas, some of which can be used for private parties, as well as the entire restaurant which fits up to 100 guests. It should be noted that the Jerusalem Meat & Eat is Mehadrin Kosher, and that all meat served here is produced in Adom Adom company, under the supervision of Rabbi Machpud.
Having browsed through the menu and taking some advice from the waitress, we decided on some starters. As my partner was a fish eating vegetarian, we chose accordingly. A fresh salad of organic red quinoa, beats, cranberries, almonds and spice herbs was very good. Good spicing, some bitterness and a nice combination of textures really upgraded this colorful dish. We also tried the lamb lahmajoun. This version of Meat & Eat is very different from the classic Turkish flat lahmajoun; in fact here it is a sort of calzone or sambusak filled with meat and vegetables. It was served hot, just out of the taboon oven, on a wooden board with tahini and olive oil. A little more spice in the filling might have made me happier, but with a hot pastry coming out of the taboon, you can't really complain. One dip into the olive oil and another tahini bite, and the lahmajoun was over before it even had a chance to get cold. We then had the ceviche that was given Asian flavors with lightly marinated corvina fish cuts and crispy vegetables. It is an interesting dish that people who appreciate non-traditional combinations can enjoy.
The waitress returned to take our main course orders, carrying two glasses of Galil Mountain winery wine of the month. Yiron and Miron are two blends that I like very much. One is cabernet-based and the other – Syrah-based. These two worked well with Meat & Eat's menu. The wine was not served by the waitress; a Mashgiach (kashrut supervisor) both opened the bottle and poured the wine into our glasses. This comes with the territory in Mehadrin Kosher restaurants.
I then ordered an entrecote steak, and my partner – the salmon fish. The fish was good and tasty, with delicate spicing bringing out the flavors of the fish that was served on a colorful tasty bed of stir-fried vegetables in olive oil and garlic, artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, and green beans. My steak too was very good, a little scorched on the outside and red and juicy on the inside – medium done, just as I had requested, with a little bit of chimichuri dressing on the side.
We did not have much room left for dessert, so we decided to share ice cream cookies: soft and rich chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream and coconut sorbet, and hot chocolate sauce and walnuts on top. Usually I tend to be skeptical when it comes to non-dairy desserts, and true, there is no comparison between non-dairy vanilla ice cream and the dairy version, but with the chocolate and the rest of the toppings, this turned out to be a very good dessert. One more espresso for the road, a 10 minute wait for the rain to stop (it didn't), and we were on our way to our (luckily close parked) car.
