The Palomar

The Palomar, a Central London restaurant serving the food of modern day Jerusalem. Influenced by the cultures of Southern Spain, North Africa & the Levant.

The Palomar | Soho | Central London Restaurant & Kitchen Bar

http://thepalomar.co.uk

The Palomar, restaurant review: I took the precaution of inviting ...

A curious, crazy one-off, where the chefs and owners are having as much fun as the customers, the menu brims with bountiful Middle Eastern maximalism, and the music rocks nearly as hard as the food.

In a party atmosphere, with chefs downing shots, singing and dancing, it showcases local produce in fusion dishes which draw inspiration from Jewish, Arabic and Mediterranean traditions.

The traditional mezze selection is served here as the Daily 6, six small bowls filled with good things – Swiss chard scattered with nubbles of feta and candied almonds; sharply-dressed fried aubergine with pomegranate seeds; a cloud of labneh floating in za'atar-spiked olive oil.

From the raw bar, kubenia, a take on steak tartare; chopped beef, spiked with bulgur and anointed with tahini and pomegranate seeds.

Clamorous, cramped and exciting, The Palomar comes from a place where sharing and breaking down barriers between Jewish and Arabic food is a more profoundly meaningful business than it is here.

The Palomar, London W1, restaurant review - Telegraph

Hot challah bread (£2) was near perfect, but it came with a tahini sauce that was, as far as we could make out, pure tahini, perhaps loosened with water – it was bitter and harsh.

The amount of meat was tiny, the tahini again too strong, and nothing else registered.

The four tops were harissa, tahini, parsley and yogurt, and when you deconstruct a kebab, you get a plate of mince.

Mussels hamusta (£12) featured fennel, courgette, Swiss chard, arak and lemon butter – in other words, tasted like the spring salad, except for six or seven mussels and the butter.

For dessert, I chanced upon something lovely: Malabi (£6), a delicate, panna-cotta-like pudding scented with rosewater, with powerful little raspberries on top and diddy coconut meringues dotted about.

London's So-Called Best Restaurant Is Only Good If You Sit at the Bar

Source: Helen Cathcart/The Palomar via Bloomberg And then Palomar won Best Restaurant in the GQ Food Drink Awards on April 28: “The Palomar has without a doubt the most chutzpah of any food and drink establishment operating in the country right now,’’ GQ said, with more hyperbole than punctuation.

Source: Helen Cathcart/The Palomar via Bloomberg Based on that meal, I would name Palomar the Best Restaurant That Opened on Rupert Street Last Year Serving the Food of Modern Day Jerusalem With a Menu Influenced by the Rich Cultures of Southern Spain, North Africa, and the Levant.

Source: Helen Cathcart/The Palomar via Bloomberg “The chef isn’t always right,” he said cheerfully, adjusting the garnish on one plate.

Source: Helen Cathcart/The Palomar via Bloomberg The beetroot carpaccio looks gorgeous and features the sweetest of beets, offset by burnt goat’s cheese and sprinkled with hazelnuts and date-and-honey syrup.

Source: Helen Cathcart/The Palomar via Bloomberg Palomar was created with the help of chefs Assaf Granit and Uri Navon, as well as Elad, from Jerusalem’s Machneyuda restaurant.

The Palomar, London

When we sat down, Elad, dressed in a white chef’s jacket, had his arm around one of the party of four at the table next to us, who in turn had poured him a glass from their bottle of red wine.

Elad subsequently introduced these customers to the table of eight next to them, a group of chefs from the River Café in west London.

His interest in his customers then led him to talk to yet another couple beside them, and within minutes he was leading the woman from this table across the restaurant to meet the River Café team.

'Landing Catch' fish 'Uri-style'Elad (a chef for the past 30 years) and his team could not have created a space that feels more in keeping with Soho.

Two main courses – seared scallops with a cured-lemon beurre blanc, and a most incongruous combination of a tagine of pork belly, dried apricots and Israeli couscous – were highly successful; a dish of sweetbread pastries with aubergine and cumin less so.

The Palomar, restaurant review: I took the precaution of inviting ...

A curious, crazy one-off, where the chefs and owners are having as much fun as the customers, the menu brims with bountiful Middle Eastern maximalism, and the music rocks nearly as hard as the food.

In a party atmosphere, with chefs downing shots, singing and dancing, it showcases local produce in fusion dishes which draw inspiration from Jewish, Arabic and Mediterranean traditions.

The traditional mezze selection is served here as the Daily 6, six small bowls filled with good things – Swiss chard scattered with nubbles of feta and candied almonds; sharply-dressed fried aubergine with pomegranate seeds; a cloud of labneh floating in za'atar-spiked olive oil.

From the raw bar, kubenia, a take on steak tartare; chopped beef, spiked with bulgur and anointed with tahini and pomegranate seeds.

Clamorous, cramped and exciting, The Palomar comes from a place where sharing and breaking down barriers between Jewish and Arabic food is a more profoundly meaningful business than it is here.

The Palomar, restaurant review: 'Good food for greedy folks – get ...

Its modern Israeli menu (although a country mile from kosher and with souvenirs from all over the Middle East in its fare) takes in a raw bar, small snacky selections and larger dishes from the oven or the grill.

This "very popular signature dish", according to Tom, has soft polenta at its base, then a mushroom ragout, some asparagus spears and a lot of Parmesan shavings.

If you want some ballast before attacking the drinks menu – just one Israeli wine, a decent Syrah at £45, but some ace-sounding cocktails – this is the dish for you (although it's not for me).

Oddly, a divided pressed- tin dish so beloved of Indian restaurants holds the meat, tart turnip tops and melty chickpeas, and is balanced on top of a narrow stand that looks perilous if we attempt an attack.

£82 for two, with wine Delightful dinner at my page-neighbour Bill's airy new place in east London: a medley of summer dishes including courgette chips, burrata and Korean fried chicken.

Grace Dent reviews The Palomar | London Evening Standard

Generally I have no truck with the sight of regional types getting overexcited on rickshaws, but I made an exception for Rupert Street, W1, last Saturday as I’d hooked a table for the much-talked-about spot The Palomar.

Chef Assaf Granit’s other restaurant, Machneyuda, in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, is raved about by Israeli foodies, and its London outpost — 35-cover restaurant at the back; 19-cover raw bar at the front — is presently considered ‘hot’.

Rumour said the place is noisy and that the chefs play loud music, that there is dancing in the kitchen, the waiting staff have their names written in the menu and the jars of Jerusalem-style truffle oil-laced polenta with mushroom, parmesan and asparagus are death row-dinner good.

We left The Palomar in a giddy manner as the chefs downed shots and banged mixing bowls with whisks to ‘Let the Music Play’ by Shannon.

The Palomar, 34 Rupert Street, W1D 6DN, thepalomar.co.uk Browse Grace Dent's latest restaurant reviews Browse Grace Dent's latest restaurant reviews 1/10 El Pastór 2/10 Radio Alice 3/10 Lingholm Kitchen 4/10 Luca 5/10 Anzu 6/10 Temper Paul Winch-Furness 7/10 Smokestak Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures 8/10 Noble Rot 9/10 Laughing Heart Evening Standard / eyevine 10/10 Park Chinois

The Palomar, London W1, restaurant review - Telegraph

Hot challah bread (£2) was near perfect, but it came with a tahini sauce that was, as far as we could make out, pure tahini, perhaps loosened with water – it was bitter and harsh.

The amount of meat was tiny, the tahini again too strong, and nothing else registered.

The four tops were harissa, tahini, parsley and yogurt, and when you deconstruct a kebab, you get a plate of mince.

Mussels hamusta (£12) featured fennel, courgette, Swiss chard, arak and lemon butter – in other words, tasted like the spring salad, except for six or seven mussels and the butter.

For dessert, I chanced upon something lovely: Malabi (£6), a delicate, panna-cotta-like pudding scented with rosewater, with powerful little raspberries on top and diddy coconut meringues dotted about.

The Palomar: restaurant review | Jay Rayner | Life and style | The ...

I had been avoiding the Palomar, on a garish stretch of Rupert Street just south of London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, because everything I had heard made it sound exactly like one of those places.

I took a seat at the bar with my companion, right by where head chef Tomer Amedi passes the dishes, and we did end up doing shots, and it wasn’t forced jollity.

I forgave them all this because the Palomar – the London outpost of a five-strong, achingly hip restaurant group in Jerusalem – serves lovely food.

We knock back our drinks and head for the door, certain the Palomar is one of those places which makes life a little bit better.

Jay Rayner’s novel The Apologist is available as an eBook from Amazon, priced £2.99 ■ Honey & Co, run by Israeli husband-and-wife team Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, is the fabulous small restaurant which helped set the Jerusalem food agenda in London.