Depending on which employee you talk to at HaSalon—a new Manhattan outpost of a popular restaurant in a warehouse district of Tel Aviv—the Israeli chef Eyal Shani might be described as an artist with a masterful lens on leeks, a poet of tomatoes, or “on another planet, in the most endearing way.” Shani is a celebrity chef in his home country, overseeing seventeen restaurants, including international locations of his fast-casual Miznon, which goes through hundreds of heads of cauliflower a day for the humbly named “baby cauliflower,” a marvel of technique that renders a crispy exterior and a near-custard center. It costs less than ten dollars and can be consumed, in Chelsea Market, on bleachers. HaSalon, on a desolate corner in Hell’s Kitchen, retains that devotion to technique but has an entirely different concept: reservations only; high-minded, high-priced food served in a kind of mismatched living room, which, after ten o’clock, turns bacchanalian, complete with dancing on tables.
The open kitchen is an excellent show for the ten-seat counter, along which piles of food provide a barrier of sorts—peak strawberries, figs, crab legs, morels, resting racks of ribs.
On a recent night around six, as bombastic classical music hinted at the drama to come, Shani himself, in the midst of several other chefs, worked in the open kitchen. It’s an excellent show for the ten-seat counter, along which piles of food provide a barrier of sorts—peak strawberries, figs, giant scallions, crab legs. The “Display only” sign, scrawled in what looks like purple lipstick, doesn’t apply to the chefs, who carve off octopus tentacles and grab resting racks of ribs within sneezing distance to serve throughout the night.
The daily menu is something of an art work itself, with a mysterious slapdash humor. The servers, casually dressed, verbose, and amiable, are happy to elaborate, offering many words, before you even order, on the “journey” you’ll be taking. This, it turns out, translates to “Don’t expect anything resembling an appetizer to come first.”
Fire-roasted meats are a highlight; the “DINOSAUR,” a generous, tender chunk of beef on a hulking bone with a delightfully sticky crust, which costs seventy-nine dollars, easily feeds two.
What, you might ask, could “ASPERGE BLANC. VERY PERSONAL” mean? According to the waitress, that’s a special dish, the chef’s joke, “for those who can take it.” (If you must know, it’s a large, thick steamed stalk of white asparagus, the top dipped in horseradish cream, proffered by hand, to be eaten tip first.) A soft-shell-crab dish, for sixty-nine dollars, she explained, “is about becoming a man. The females stay the same size, but the men have a short time to get bigger when they shed their shells.” It arrived as a tableau of three fried crabs set upon a black rock, strewn with a web of seaweed, climbing upward, though toward what, besides our mouths, it was impossible to tell.
Shani creates tableaux with seafood and craggy rocks, in dishes such as “Ocean Treasures,” which can include uni, osetra caviar, Japanese yellowtail, giant octopus, and “3 stormy water seaweeds.”
It’s also hard to tell how much of the servers’ spiel is on script and how much is off the cuff—though one waiter proudly claimed that he kept it to “only ten to fifteen per cent bullshit.” That was right before the twenty-four-dollar tomato appeared. On the menu, it’s called “The best tomato in NY is naked.” On the plate, it’s a peeled tomato—a large, deep-reddish heirloom—cut into chunks and doused with olive oil and salt. It was a very nice tomato, but, for that price, it should come with a massage and a pedicure.
The party starts after ten o’clock, when the lights are dimmed, the music shifts to Israeli and American pop and rock, and diners jump up, some on chairs and tables, to dance.
The prices are so high that you might find yourself straining to calculate the best deals, but, between the twenty-seven-dollar green-leaf salad (“which explodes out of the plate”) and the measly portion of slow-roasted lamb swimming in grayish peas for “79 per human,” it’s best not to bother. Anyway, you could be happy with a whole fish, such as a saragus “caught yesterday,” or the “DINOSAUR,” a generous, tender chunk of beef on a hulking bone with a delightfully sticky salt-and-pepper crust, which, also at seventy-nine dollars, easily feeds two.
On a Friday, around 10:15 P.M., the lights dimmed and metal gates were pulled down over the windows. The d.j. played a catchy Israeli pop song, and servers flooded the aisles, clapping and hooting. People of all ages, dressed in their night-club best, jumped up, some onto chairs and tables, to dance. “Rock Around the Clock” led into “Y.M.C.A.” By the time Slash’s first riff of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” kicked in, either the party was really getting good, or it was time to go. (Dishes $9-$200.) ♦
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/a-tel-aviv-restaurant-brings-bacchanalia-and-technique-to-hells-kitchen
2019-06-21 09:01:50Z
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