Worth Your Weight?

Zahav's food is fine. Its prices are not.

by Trey Popp

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Published: Jul 29, 2008

Michael T. Regan SMALL WORLD: Begin your meal at Zahav with shareable salatim, or various hot and cold salads. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

At Zahav, the most highly anticipated restaurant to open in Philadelphia all year, the floors are made of Jerusalem stone. Before its late-spring debut, co-owners Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov took senior staff members to Israel for inspiration. Even the line cooks working under Solomonov's culinary direction come with stacked résumés. On a recent weeknight, all four on duty boasted credentials working in one of Marc Vetri's two abundantly praised kitchens — except for one guy who'd done time in both.

My server shared these facts with me in an evident effort to impress. He needn't have. Each tidbit was more than adequately reflected in the bill he brought at the end of the night.

Zahav, which means "gold" in Hebrew, lives up to its name in many respects. The interior is finely wrought without being fussy. Giant squares of clear glass reward curious glances into the kitchen but contain the heat and noise. Tabletops as thick as butcher's blocks are rimmed with bas-relief carvings. Colored glass glistens in perforated metal lamps that hang before wall-to-wall windows embracing the Old City skyline. The servers' Hebrew-scripted T-shirts strike an odd note next to the host's three-button blazer and tie, but the surroundings are sophisticated and comfortable.

General manager Max Shapiro has crafted a small list of cocktails that are adventurous yet don't feel strained, which is no mean feat. And the small plates coming out of the kitchen are plenty tasty. They're also plenty small — but more on that later.

With the curious exception of a bland and droopy cucumber and tomato salad, a classic staple of Israeli cuisine, nothing I ate at Zahav fell flat. Raw ground lamb is punched up ever so slightly with allspice, and boasts a bright, clean aspect that signals high-quality meat. Cold options also include tiny slices of delicious salt-cured mackerel, a fish that environmentally conscious diners everywhere should be substituting for farmed salmon this year. Mediterranean salads hit all the right notes — especially the twice-cooked eggplant, with smoky undertones haunting the slightly sweet, chilled hash.

Hot dishes are also done well. The tomato base of a Moroccan-style fish stew made for juicy summer eating, and housemade Merguez sausages are good comfort food for anyone who likes the right amount of spice. In fact, one of the things I liked best about Zahav was that the amount of spicy heat is almost always right — which is to say that the kitchen doesn't shy away from it the way most American places in this price range do.

Meat and fish skewers expand the range of capably rendered comfort food. Tender chicken topped with sumac-tinted onions was perhaps the plainest of the bunch, but pretty tasty nonetheless. A broad ribbon of dorade fish got an intense boost from the bed of tahini underneath it. My favorite kebab featured little squares of lamb leg that tasted like they'd been painted with a magic coat of sweetness — and I liked the almond-studded rice even if the portion was way too skimpy.

Tiny. Small. Skimpy. I am not the only diner to emerge from Zahav miffed that those adjectives were the weightiest things on my tongue. The restaurant may work fine as a place for a drink and a snack, but when a cuisine based on inexpensive staples like chickpeas and couscous yields a $300 dinner for four people who remain hungry at the end, something's wrong.

A kitchen stuffed with overachievers doesn't change the fact that many of Zahav's dishes can be found elsewhere for less money. The truth is that you don't need tutelage under Philadelphia's master of Italian cooking to make good cabbage salad, or to thread 4 ounces of chicken on a $16 skewer plated with a portion of Israeli couscous that wouldn't overspill your palm.

Zahav could please a lot more people by providing more carbohydrate ballast, but sometimes it was hard to avoid the impression that the reason they didn't was to generate more expensive orders. Why, for instance, was our server so stingy with the flatbread, we wondered upon getting a single piece (!) to accompany a pricey spread of eight dipping-style salads?

And what was with his surly non-response to my question about wine? While perusing a modest list of bottles marked up to an average of quadruple retail, I'd noticed a pair of unidentified house wines priced at $25 per liter.

"Can you tell me what you serve as your house red and white?" I asked.

"It's table wine," he replied, evidently taking me for an idiot.

I tried to muster a winning smile. "I mean, can you tell me who makes it, or where it comes from, or what grapes are in it?"

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

No he couldn't — or perhaps wouldn't — but he could snootily compare it to "smacking a bag of Franzia" while turning up his nose at my very curiosity. "It's table wine," he said again.

"Thank you, jackass," I wanted to reply. Why offer it at all if it's only to be an object of derision, or if it inspires too much shame to disclose its particulars?

But a bit of haughty service is not the issue. And frankly, neither are the portion sizes — at least not entirely. What disappointed me about my $300 meal at Zahav is that it offered meager food for thought. At that price, I expect dishes that expand my culinary horizons, or at least provoke discussion. What I got instead was skillfully prepared food that didn't move me.

If that verdict gives the appearance of a critical bar that has been set too high, Zahav could easily lower it by resetting their prices. By way of comparison, a week later I ordered a lamb kebab tapa at Bar Ferdinand. It came with a creative Moroccan relish elevated by capers and sunflower seeds and dressed with a citrus yogurt sauce. In conceptual terms, that dish was easily on par with, if not superior to, Zahav's Persian lamb skewer — which was little more than half the size for twice the price.

Perhaps the restaurant simply needs more time to find its identity. Toward the end of our meal, our server brought out two dinner menus that were completely different than the paper sheet we'd ordered from. They detailed special tasting meals, available only on Thursday nights in "The Quarter," a room that holds 24 people.

We gazed at them in envy. Truffled labneh canapé, fried mussels in walnut sauce, English pea custard with caramelized sumac, white chocolate and lavender mousse ... here were dishes that could provoke and inspire! And for $65 per person, the tasting menu didn't even cost that much more than what we'd just blown through.

The server must have read that thought on our faces. "The regular menu is really just Solomonov's take on Israeli comfort food," he informed us. "This is him going after a James Beard Award."

In a way, that summed up everything that had frustrated us about our meal. Why wasn't this the restaurant? If Solomonov does aspire to such heights, why doesn't he try to reach them every night of the week — for more than 24 people? The late discovery of what we'd missed sharpened my party's disappointment.

I look forward to trying one of the chef's weekly tasting menus. Solomonov's star has been hoisted to the heavens by many, and I would very much like to put my stomach in his care when he's got all his proverbial pistons firing. But as long as the regular menu at Zahav is overpriced comfort food on cruise control, I'll be eating somewhere else.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Zahav | 237 St. James Place, 215-625-8800, zahavrestaurant.com | Hours: Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; open for dinner Sun.-Thu., 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m.; late night menu available Wed.-Sat., 5 p.m.-1 a.m. | Mezze, small plates, soups, $6-$14; Skewers, $13-$17 | Reservations recommended | Wheelchair accessible

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