Talk-A-Vino

Once again, I would like to state the obvious – it is great to have friends. I’m in Israel again, and thanks to my dear friend Kfir, the culinary journey continues (I already wrote about few of my favorite places in Tel-Aviv, and you can read about it here and here). The new discovery – Messa, Chef Restaurant in Tel-Aviv.

Few years ago, I was quite lucky to visit (well, the right word is “to experience”) restaurant called Orca in Tel-Aviv ( lucky simply because the place is now closed – and it was on the list of 100 best restaurants in the world). This might be a bit far fetching, but Messa reminded me of that Orca visit. May be in ambiance, may be in food presentation and quality, may be in expectations – but I found some resemblance between the two.

For wine, we decided to go with Judean Hills Har’El Syrah 2008 from CLOS de GAT, one of the boutique Israeli wineries (it also represented very good value at about $55 on the wine list). This wine was round and polished, with hint of spices, leather and dark red fruit, complemented by soft tannins.

Messa doesn’t offer tasting menu, however, a lot of appetizers and main dishes are offered in small and large sizes, which essentially allows to create a tasting menu – this is what we decided to do. We had three different appetizers – Purple Calamari, Veal Sweetbreads and Foie Gras, out of which the Foie Gras had the best balance of flavors:

Purple  Calamari with lemon cream, eel and goose liver

Veal Sweetbreads with sweet potato tortellini, sunchoke cream and pearl onions

Foie Gras

For the main dishes we decided on Black Truffle Ravioli, Seafood Couscous in Crab Lemon Broth and Mushroom and Goat Cheese Risotto.  The first two dishes listed Lemon among the ingredients – and it was A LOT of lemon in those dishes. To be more precise, it was too much of it, so the winner of the entree taste contest was Mushroom and Goat Cheese Risotto, which had amazing earthy and heart warming taste profile. And of course, with the pictures:

Black Truffle Ravioli

Seafood Couscous in Lemon Crab and Thyme Broth

Risotto with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese

Dessert? Of course there was dessert – your waistline doesn’t take priority when you in a restaurant like this. We ordered one dessert, Valrhona Chocolate Delight, and got a nice surprise in a form of Strawberry Banana Crumble desert “on the house”. There was no competition here – both were great:

Valrhona Chocolate Delight

Strawberry Banana Crumble

Israel is growing at tremendous pace as a country, and its culinary landscape is getting better and better all the time. I wish all of us many pleasant discoveries along this culinary journey…