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Night 29: Tel-Aviv Café
Tom lived off the leftovers for several days, but the
next evening I was out again, this time for my penultimate
meal. Am I getting wistful? Although the thing that
I feel more than wistful is waistful. (I must certainly
not be the first person to flip the old slogan, "a
waist is a terrible thing to mind.") For my next-to-last
dinner on the boss, I decide to spend his shekels at
the Tel-Aviv Café in Bethesda.
I am an errant tribeswoman. Although I march with the
world's legion of, as we used to kid ourselves in college,
SHBs (Sultry Hebrew Beauties), I have never been to
Israel. I do not go to temple and, most Decembers, a
Christmas tree is erected in my living room. But culturally
I am most definitely Jewish, and culture includes cooking,
so I'm up for a Middle Eastern meal. A mixed surprise,
then, to open the menu and find that the food has taken
a giant step west. But what luck. The kitchen at the
café has for the last two months been run by
Philippe Maigrot, formerly of La Ferme! While diehards
can still dip their pita into hummus and baba ganoush,
Middle Eastern dishes seem to have been swept off the
menu by a westward wind.
My companions and I opt for a delicate crab and broccoli
flan, and smoked duck and curly endive salad. There
is also a bowl of savory zaatar, an olive oil,
garlic, and herb concoction that nicely lubricates our
lips. We order three different entrées and actually
manage to stick to our promise of equal splitsies: tender
and nicely trimmed rack of lamb, fresh trout with potato
and Jerusalem artichoke puree in porcini reduction,
and — look! — the same wonderful sea bass
with braised morels and savoy cabbage in sauce moutarde
I ate at La Ferme. I might be telling tales out of school,
but M. Maigrot has brought with him that wonderful dish,
and, while not plated as elegantly as it was at La Ferme,
it is every bit as divine.
We split three desserts — warm and luscious almond-pear
tartlet with vanilla ice cream, chocolate mousse cake
with fresh raspberries and a satin round of cappuccino
tart. The Ben Aim family, owners of the café
since its inception in 1994, greet us with complimentary
glasses of Limoncello di Capri, an after-dinner elixir
the color of the sun itself. Natives of Beersheva, Israel,
the brothers came here in 1976. David is the former
chef; despite the coup of having Maigrot in the kitchen,
he avers that he will still tie on an apron for the
old regulars who miss the old menu, with its Israeli/Moroccan/Mediterranean
accent.
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