Shulchan, Table, is a fairly new restaurant. The concept, as I understand it: smart tasty dishes trying not to be too clever at reasonable prices. We went to try it out, continuing the whole week celebration of Omer’s birthday 🙂 This is what we found out.
Ambiance:
many tables put close together but not over-crowded, comfortable feeling. I liked it.
The cold kitchen outside in the dinning room, the decor is industrial style but not overwhelming
Intimate atmosphere in a public shared space, this is exactly what I look for when I go out to eat in a restaurant.
The hot kitchen is not part of the dinning room but is still open kitchen for the customers to take a peek. When we went to take a peek I felt like we’re disturbing the staff a bit but they didn’t say anything.
Menu:
Another aspect I really liked in the restaurant. Everything sounded worth trying, good pricing, interesting ingredients and combinations. Made me think, before even trying the food, that I want to come back here again because one time is not enough to try everything.
The menu is also conceptionalized. The logo is the letter “ח” in Hebrew but also looks like a table. The main ingredient of the dish is accentuated on the right side of each dish and can be read when the menu is closed.
There are small – medium and big size dishes and the dinners are motivated to order some dishes to share, a term that’s called “to open a table”.
The daily specials on the other side. All prices ranging from 28 to 142 NIS.
The wine list. They have an interesting wine suggestion. In order to bring people more familiar with good Israeli wine options they found a similar Israeli match to three international respected wine bottles. Then the customer can select one of these couples, be given a taste of the international and the Israeli wine and decided which one he’ll have.
Service:
Was inconsistent throughout the meal. We had a very professional waitress at the beginning that disappeared all of a sudden. Some requests were answered quickly but some were forgotten. It was merely confusing and didn’t disturb me that much but for some people it can be annoying.
Food:
Bread basket (14 NIS), we received two types of fresh bread, white and dark, only 2-3 slices of each with three condiments: olive oil-tomato-balsamic vinegar; za’atar pesto, eggplant cream. All three were excellent. The eggplant cream was smokey and smooth, the pesto very cool as well.
Bruschetta of fresh anchovies, grilled vegetable salad, coriander (48 NIS). A nice start, classic and simple. Maybe a bit too pricy relatively.
We ended up choosing the white wine contest between this French Chablis Domain William Fevre, 2010 and the Israeli Lewinsohn Garage de Papa Blanc 2011 (198 NIS each bottle). We tasted both. I expected it to be blind tasting but it wasn’t. I was the only one who noticed which is which but anonymously we decided on the Chablis. The Israeli was very good as well and very different. I will be happy to enjoy it another time.
Carb (11 NIS), was a small bread, pan baked, something between Indian Naan and Italian Focaccia. Came with a side of creme fraiche with tomatoes. A weird side but a nice bread.
Veal sweetbreads, cauliflower cream and Portabello mushrooms (58 NIS). I was excited to see veal sweetbreads in the menu and it was the first dish I was certain to order. The mushrooms and cauliflower were nice but the sweetbreads were a bit disappointing. Some of the pieces were chewy instead of melting in the mouth and there wasn’t enough sauce so the flavors had difficulty coming together.
Filo cigar stuffed with fish, chopped pistachios and mascarpone (44 NIS). I really liked it, it wasn’t a refined dish but it was a very tasty one.
The fish wasn’t over-cooked even though it was in a stuffing form. Balanced dish.
Tuna tartar, lime soy sauce, tobiko (62 NIS). Another very successful dish. It was fresh and tasty. Reminded me of 44’s tuna tartar with a rice paper on top (which I still don’t get) but a better version of it.
Hot pan of shrimps caprese mozzarella tomato and basil (92 NIS). There were also calamate olives in there. It was tasty and who can deny melting blobs of motzarella in their hot pan? Nevertheless it was a strange match and came out a bit watery in the end.
Seared Fillet of Beef, Potatoes latkes, Arab spinach, mashed potatoes with truffles (138 NIS). This dish looked very nice but I didn’t try it. Omer’s dad enjoyed it but complaint it wasn’t served hot enough and the plate wasn’t heated. We were not charged for this dish.
As another main course we ordered the Jerusalem artichoke ravioli, filet of beef, veal stock (142 NIS) because we saw it looked delicious in the next table, but the waitress came back with bad news – it was finished. We took the whole fish instead:
Grilled whole Grey Mullet, almond milk sauce, roasted almonds, Ratta Potatoes, spinach (142 NIS). I took control of the filetting of the fish and serving to everyone. This dish was problematic though. No plate for the bones and head made it very sloppy, the sauce was too delicate for the not so delicate grill fish and it washed off. The potatoes were boring and the roasted almonds were nowhere to be found. I liked the spinach but this dish needs to be refined.
Millefueille – Arlette of bananas, creme patissiere and salty caramel (36 NIS). Unfortunately I didn’t like this dessert. The creme patissiere tasted like whipped cream and it was too sweet and one-tone.
Overall:
A good concept, nice settings and good management but still early to say about the food. It was a bumpy road with highs and lows but a very positive attitude trying to make the dinners happy in the end. I wish this restaurant good luck and I will wait few months before my next visit.
The fillet looks great, although the pricing (while might be justified for a “high end” trendy spot) could get you an all you can eat met experience at a place like Rak Basar, or the far more superior Alabama.
Hi That Food, I’m very glad to have found another Israeli food blogger in English. Hope you’ll enjoy my blog as well.
About what you said, I have to disagree. Rak basar is low quality – large amount almost fast food restaurant. The other place you mentioned I had to look it up and found out it’s in Netanya. This is the reason it’s cheaper. Tel-Aviv is a lot more expensive property to maintain. I think Shulchan’s prices are very reasonable, the more important thing is to keep the high quality products and cooking level to justify these prices. It wasn’t perfect but going to a good direction.