Desert Harvest

Michael Solomonov wanted to prepare his chefs for the opening of his new restaurant. So he led them on a caravan across the Holy Land.

by Michael T. Regan and Pervaiz Shallwani

Words by Pervaiz Shallwani

Photographs by Michael T. Regan

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Desert Harvest

It's rare for any chef — let alone one about to open his first restaurant — to take his staff on an international excursion to immerse them in the food they will cook and serve. But to Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov, a seven-day expedition in the first week of March was key to a process that began last summer when he began realizing his vision for a modern Israeli restaurant. Solomonov and co-owner Steve Cook wanted to give senior staff a small window into Solomonov's Israel. New York-based food writer Pervaiz Shallwani and City Paper staff photographer Michael T. Regan, friends of Solomonov, were invited to tag along on the journey, which will culminate Monday, May 5, when Zahav (Hebrew for "gold") opens its doors in Society Hill.

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Tel Aviv, Israel — Straight off a 10-hour economy-class flight from Newark, an entourage from Philadelphia is greeted by an enthusiastic and eager man just beyond the baggage claim conveyors at Ben Gurion International Airport. His name is Michael Solomonov. He's their boss. And he's sent for them.

There is little time for chatter. There's important work to be done. More specifically, eating. Solomonov has flown this contingent, employees of his opening-soon Israeli restaurant, across the ocean for a whirlwind culinary tour. They board the midnight-gray minibus on which they'll spend much of the next seven days, darting up and down this nation roughly the size of New Jersey.

With all the work they were doing back home, this trip is, in a way, a vacation for the group: Solomonov, Steve Cook, two chefs, the restaurant designer and the general manager. But the eating, sightseeing and late-night alcohol bingeing are an important part of preparing to open Zahav, given the fact that most members of the group know Israeli culture only from what they've seen in the media.

"The food is such a new thing for a lot of people and I just sort of got tired of telling my cooks there is this one hummus place or there is this falafel place by my school," says Solomonov. "I wanted them to see it instead. ... It's investing in your cooks. You're trying to emulate [the food]. How else are they supposed to understand?"

Solomonov began dreaming of opening a restaurant like Zahav in the years after the 29-year-old chef transitioned from aimless college dropout to chef at Philadelphia's celebrated Marigold Kitchen. There are plenty of places that serve elements of what Solomonov calls "modern Israeli" cuisine, a style, he stresses, that goes beyond traditional conceptions of Israeli food and encompasses the mélange of cultures that make up Israel today. Beyond Jewish and Arab, Solomonov's Israel also owes debts to the cultural contributions of Moroccans, Yemenis, Russians, Iraqis, Tunisians, Georgians, Bulgarians and beyond.

It's a complicated country. And Solomonov's ties to it are complicated, as well. In 2003, his younger brother, David, was killed by Hezbollah sniper fire while on routine patrol near the border town of Metulla.

"It has pushed me to promote the country," says Solomonov. "I want people to understand."

For this trip, Solomonov has arranged a jam-packed itinerary — one page, two sides — that includes not just markets, restaurants and roadside stands, but three home-cooked feasts: one Bulgarian, Romanian and Persian; another Moroccan; the final Yemeni. The group will eat — a lot. But Solomonov and his band of chefs will also be given humbling lessons on making the cuisine from Jewish mothers and grandmothers whose ancestors have been preparing this food for centuries.

During the seven-day journey, the group will spend no more than 36 consecutive hours in any one hotel, gorging while cramming in just enough energetic sightseeing (Roman ruins at Cesarea, a camel ride and a frigid desert night in a Bedouin tent, the deep burn of a soak in the super-salty Dead Sea) to create an appetite for more eating. The group will consume the equivalent of roughly five hearty dinners a day.

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No more than 30 minutes off the plane, the group stops for its first meal at the rustic Tavlin spice farm and market in the rugged Judean Hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Located in an airy thatched-roof building with tall windows that showcase the wild spice plants sprouting on its grounds, the shop is filled with the aroma of colorful fresh and dried spices, curries and teas. Silver bowls overflow with moist evergreen Middle Eastern thyme known as za'tar, varying shades of mustard-colored curries, and the deep maroon of sumac. These are the spices that played into much of Solomonov's cuisine at Marigold Kitchen where he cooked for a little more than two years before leaving in January to concentrate on Zahav. The stop is supposed to be a snack, but the group gorges on salads, marinated fennel, purple rice, nutty quinoa and a meaty entrée of fish, all finished off with earthy Turkish coffee.

Next is a midafternoon stop at Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda market during the final hours before it becomes a ghost town for the Shabbat, the Jewish holy day that begins at dusk each Friday. The crush of shoppers is at its highest. Bread-makers are kneading and baking hot lavash, pitas and challah, flaky pastries and sweets that are gone moments after they emerge from the oven. Meat, vegetable and dairy sellers, looking to get rid of perishable merchandise before the Israeli weekend (Friday and Saturday), offer deals and discounts.

The group has just had a pretty robust meal, but there are plenty of samples: green kohlrabi, sweet mangoes, juicy watermelon. General manager Max Shapiro scores a hot challah loaf. The egg bread is crisp on the outside and lets out a plume of steam as he tears a piece to reveal the buttery blond center. Others munch on cheese-filled burekas, flaky chocolate pastries and voluptuous sweet strawberries.

"There's a hundred different things to fucking eat," Solomonov says. "This is where we first ate Israeli produce. These guys are used to the Italian Market."

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It wasn't until he was in the Holy Land that Solomonov found his calling in the restaurant life. He was lost — no longer afforded the innocence of a child, but still far from an adult. After high school he had enrolled at the University of Vermont as an art student but found himself more enamored with the new freedom to snowboard and party with little sense of consequence.

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After three semesters he dropped out and moved back to his mother's home in Israel, a place he had spent only a few years of his life (his parents moved to Pittsburgh soon after he was born, and the family moved back to Israel when he was 15). He was a native whose understanding of the culture and language was on a par with that of most tourists.

The only job he could land was in the tiny Village Bakery a few blocks from his mother's house, about 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv. With his lack of Hebrew skills, he couldn't wait tables, so he started in the tiny kitchen scrubbing stacks of hot baking pans and "chasing mice with a pizza cutter" for $3 an hour, 12 hours a day. He remembers the grown men in the kitchen calling him "Johnny" on good days; most other days he was simply known as "asshole."

Two months later he moved to a nearby Coffee Tree, where he got his first dose of refined cooking. He was handed the delicate task of making a smooth Alfredo sauce. It was here Solomonov realized he wanted to be a cook.

"I learned how to move really, really fast," Solomonov recalls. "I learned how to stand on my feet for 16 hours a day. I learned how to speak Hebrew in a month and also learned about Israeli culture."

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A gathering in Israel is an elaborate eating affair that begins with several types of salads, followed by small plates, then a main course that is usually meat, and finishes with an assortment of desserts. Solomonov has included three of these on the trip.

On Shabbat, he takes the group to Ashdod for a Moroccan meal at the childhood home of one of his managers, Eilon Gigi, whose mother produces a spread of more than a half-dozen salads, a poached fish and an artichoke heart stuffed with peppery-sweet ground beef. By the time the desserts are rolled out, the group is quietly groaning for culinary mercy, but in the end they are polite, and make room.

Two days later, at an early dinner at Solomonov's father's home, his family lays out a spread of Persian, Romanian and Bulgarian staples, including a make-your-own shawarma table with a heaping plate of tender slow-cooked lamb, warm, pillowy pitas and fixings from tahini and hummus to pickled onions; his brother-in-law makes a Persian rice with a golden crust and his grandmother's burekas.

Finally, in Hadera, there's a Yemeni feast at the home of family friend Ofer Shlomo (Zahav's contractor), which is highlighted by Yemeni soup, a velvety chicken broth that gets its deep flavor from hawaij — a blend of turmeric, black pepper and cumin. The soup is thickened at the table with pungent hilbe — puréed and whipped fenugreek.

Despite being from a country well acquainted with chicken soup, the combination draws raves and plenty of calls for seconds. Well into dessert, Solomonov is on bowl No. 5. The family is pleasantly shocked. They have never seen anyone eat that many bowls in one sitting.

Zahav sous chef Sam Smith and baker Wes Johnson make their way into the tiny kitchen where Ofer's mother, Malka Shlomo, has been slaving over the hot stove since 2 a.m. slow cooking the soup and grilling the lachuch, a spongy bread not unlike Ethiopian injera.

If they are going to re-create her dishes at Zahav, Malka wants to make sure they are going to do them right. She begins pulling out bags of spices and weighing them in her hand to show proper measurements. While making the bread, she becomes irritated by Johnson's technique. She grabs his arm and guides it as he ladles the batter.

"I want to marry that woman," Smith says. "She is so bad-ass. She just gets in our face and tells us what to do."

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What Solomov is exhibiting, though, is more than traditional home-cooked food. Equally important on this trip are the restaurants and, especially, the street vendors. The bus makes a number of quick stops on the journey, including two towns where the sole purpose is to get off, cozy up to a chairless food stand for a sandwich, and then get right back on.

There are a plethora of street vendors and one-trick-pony restaurants representing the enclaves who began immigrating to Israel even before the United Nations created the state following World War II.

There are the ground kabob places — the more delicate Eastern European varieties and the spicier Middle Eastern ones.

"You do the street foods," Solomonov says, "because there is one guy who does it the best and he nails it."

Consider shakshuka. At Dr. Shakshuka in the old city of Yafo, the group runs into the doctor himself, a large, bald Russian man who looks like the Godfather. His shakshuka may no longer be the best in the country, but he's made famous this smoky tomato stew, dressed with feta cheese and topped with two runny eggs cooked into it at the last minute.

There's also the Iraqi sabich stand, Oved Sabich, in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim. The dish is a pita stuffed with eggplant, vegetables, tahinia, an egg that's been hardboiled overnight in onion skins and coffee, and two sauces: a tart mango pickle, which owner Oved Daniel refers to, when serving Americans, as L.A. Lakers, and a spicier red he bills as Chicago Bulls.

The treasure, though, is in the Yemenite quarter of Tel Aviv at a restaurant called Maganda. Here the group finally gets to eat what Solomonov had been raving about for much of the trip: foie gras kabobs, or smoky chunks of buttery, fattened duck liver.

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With eating comes ideas. Among other things, Johnson and Smith have been studying the shapes of burekas: triangles, squares, rectangles. On one bus ride after Maganda, the two, along with Solomonov, start brainstorming. Maybe they could use ramps, dress them up with a salty cheese of Keshkavel and bread crumbs, or slice them thin with mushrooms for a gratin. It's a possibility that one of those modern takes on Israeli cuisine will be showcased in a smaller section of the restaurant known as the Quarter.

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All but a handful of the more than 50 dishes on the menu at Zahav are re-creations of what Solomonov and his staff experienced on the trip. Along with burekas, there are the kabobs, four kinds of hummus and, of course, the soup, which will be served lachuch, hilbe and all.

"You can explain a thousand times what hummus tastes like," Solomonov says, "but the only hummus they have ever tasted is not in Israel. I can make it a hundred times, but I want them to taste it. I want the sous chefs to tell the cooks, 'That's not what it's supposed to be like.' It's part of the experience of having it at a hummus stall in Israel. It's the romance in that."

(editorial@citypaper.net)