Before I left to Paris, I visited Adora several times. I even wrote about it in my earliest posts. I considered Adora as one of my Tel-Aviv favorites. The past few months I started realizing that coming back to some of the restaurants in Tel-Aviv disappointed me and hadn’t met my newly developed higher standards. I was afraid the same will happen with Adora, yet I couldn’t resist giving it a try.
We went for a fixed price dinner (129 NIS per person) and this is what we found out:
The ambiance of the place is romantic and intimate yet modest.
Too romantic? We found it hard to take pictures with the dimmed lights.
The menu for this special dinner, we could each choose a starter, a main and a dessert. No descriptions given so I’m glad I took a picture of the normal menu as well.
With the dinner we were suggested Kir / cheap sparkling wine of some sort but we could upgrade to a glass of the house wine for an additional 10 NIS. Binyamina Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, was lighter than expected but fitted the event.
As an Amuse Bouche we had a small soup of leeks and potato. It was an excellent soup, we wanted more of it and it certainly opened our apatite.
Sourdough bread
Garlic confit, dried tomatoes tapenade and yellow butter.
The bread was fresh but it wasn’t very “sourish”. All the condiments were pretty good.
Moroccan cigars filled with veal, Moroccan spices, Lebanese tahini and fresh tomato sauce. The least favorite starter. Just boring and a bit too greasy.
Purple calamari a la plancha with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, served with msabbaha of burnt eggplant and white tahini. Was a better starter, I liked it even though it was a bit out-dated dish.
Mullet fillet pan fried, served with roasted tomatoes, bok-choy, potatoes confit and lemon and garlic confit cream. The fish and sauce were very good. I don’t know why we didn’t get any of the vegetables and instead just a piece of carrot. Also the potatoes confit turned out as just mashed potato. I guess this was the difference between the fixed menu and the normal menu
Slow cooked asado, potato cream and brioche crumble. Came as a shepherd’s pie dish inside a hot pan. It was okay but a bit disappointing – I usually don’t like it when everything’s mixed together. The waitress was very kind and replaced this dish immediately.
Risotto with vegetable stock and white wine, Arabic spinach and truffle, served with parmesan and creme fraiche. A real nice vegetarian alternative. I really liked it, it was full of earthy flavors.
Chocolate dessert: chocolate mousse, chocolate cream, cookies and whipped cream. A play of textures and altogether a very good chocolate dessert. Well made.
Melon sorbet in almond soup. A lighter and refreshing dessert that fitted my exploding tummy needs. It was a good balance with the chocolate heavy dish. The sorbet was very good but the soup had a small cyanide aftertaste.
The good: the service was excellent and warm, the ambiance was romantic and intimate, the chef Avi Biton was present there like always, some simple yet very well made and seasoned dishes like the soup, the fish, the risotto and the chocolate dessert, good value for the money.
The bad: I think Adora’s fixed menu dinner isn’t as good as the original dinning experience can be, some “misses” like the cigars, the asado and too much mashed potatoes everywhere, the menu doesn’t change as often as I would like it to.
Bottom line: Go to Adora, but do it with no limitations of a fixed menu. There are beautiful dishes there that weren’t available to us and the prices are still very reasonable as is.
[…] feeling one get when eating good rice. I just didn’t get this urge to take another bit. Liked Adora’s risotto a lot […]