Halevantini (Tel Aviv) 07/2018

In the heart of Tel Aviv small cafe/restaurants abound. Every few yards there are chairs and tables on the sidewalk 

with endless diners enjoying meals.
This looked nice and clean with spacious tables. 
in an open medium size room.

Conveniently menus are in both in Hebrew

and English

All meals come with a collection of salads and dips and a choice of rice or chips.

These included, from the bottom clockwise, Tehina, Humus, Eggplant, toasted pita, spicy tomato and Israeli salad.

A moment later a pickled vegetable dish arrived. 
Felafel are always available.

I suppose there are others but I don't know of them, where you can get a shashlik stick of Foie gras d'oie plus half a dozen side dishes for less than A$40.
 Foie gras is a luxury food item. It is the liver of a duck or goose, especially fattened by force feeding large amounts of corn through a funnel pushed down the birds throat, a process called gavage. It is controversial with animal rights advocates claiming that it is cruel and it is banned in Australia. At the same time in France it is protected as part of the cultural and gastronomic heritage of the country. It has a very long history, dating back to Egyptian times. More recently, in the 17th century, Foie gras production was developed by Jews in Alsace. France continues to be by far the biggest producer in the world. 
Here, in Israel, one finds it on the menu at many small Turkish, Arabic and Israeli restaurants. On the menu here we were delighted to have it.

Cooked for only about 20 seconds on very high heat it was superb. The rich, buttery delicate taste is as much a sensation, a feeling, as it is a flavour. A mouthful of luxury.
Sweatbreads are usually from the pancreas, other glands also qualify, and are rarely served in Australia except as a small accompaniment to a main dish. Here they were available as a shashlik.

This was not a dish to write home about. The sweatbreads were overcooked and lacked any delicacy and the chips were oily and unappealing. A skewer of barely cooked, grilled vegetables didn't do much to help.

Beef shashlik was tasty but tough. 

I asked for it to be blue and the waiter turned up with two beef shashliks with no idea which was which so they took it back and made another, and it was blue!They also have vegetarian dishes, for example this bowl of rice with lentils. 

This near tasteless dish was rice covered with a cucumber salad.

Things like this make me glad I'm a carnivore. 
We finished our meal with Malabi, a sort of Middle Eastern version of cream brulée.

This is supposed to have a special taste from the milk that is used but this one was more like a sweet custard.

There was nothing special about this restaurant except for the Foie gras but that was out of this world.

Score: 13/20

Almazett (Nth Caulfield) 03/2017

Not only have the wait staff changed, and the price of course, but the room seems to be lighter and more attractive. 

Decor is simple with little decoration. 

White clothed tables  promise a better class of restaurant.
 
As well as an a la carte menu they offer a $44 banquet and, for an extra six dollars, the addition of crustaceans. Corkage is $5/ bottle and, not unreasonably, with screw top bottles, we opened them ourselves. 
A plate of pickled turnip, diacon I guess, and carrot was served while we considered the menu. 

The menu is pretty much the same as years ago. Of course we went for the big banquet.
Before long dishes began to arrive in rapid succession. We had to ask them to slow down as we could not eat that fast and the table was becoming over full.
Mezze, a series of small dishes, came first. 
Taboule, a Lebanese classic lemon flavoured salad of parsley, burghul, tomato and other ingredients such as spring onions and mint with olive oil. 

This came with bowls of Hummus,

and Tahinna

Pita bread  

These were quickly followed by felafel with a tasty yogurt salad dressing

and meat rolls.

Until the meat rolls everything was very good and plentiful but the luke warm rolls, with a soft pastry missed the mark.
Lemon flavoured barbecued chicken wings was another winner


Lebanese meat balls, rissoles you might say, are usually seasoned with a variety of Middle Eastern spices and often have pine nuts included. 

Unfortunately these were over baked and dry with very little flavour except for lemon, yet again. A bowl of roast potato again with lemon and parsley, 

was also served before the crustaceans. 
The BBQ'd prawns were a little over cooked but quite tasty and the scallops were excellent.

This was followed by a whole fish, between four of us, 

which was seriously overcooked, as was the next course of chicken and lamb shashlik coverd by slices of thin luke warm pizza.

This was accompanied by bowls of rice

and beans

Dessert.
Mahalabia is a classic Lebanese dessert made by boiling down milk and then adding sugar, rose water, cream and cardamon. 

This one was not sweet enough, lacked taste and was too firm.

Finally we were served Baklava and Turkish delight with Arabic style coffee, with a touch of cardamon, in a Finjan
It was not haute cuisine but Almazett gave us a taste of Lebanese cooking and hospitality - there was a very large amount of food which we could not finish. On the down side the fish, the rissoles and the chicken and lamb shashliks were very overcooked and the seasoning was monotonous, almost every dish dominated, to a greater or lesser degree, by lemon.
Comparisons, they say are, are odious. Looking back at Abla's, which we went to almost 10 years ago, I would say that Abla had a little more variety but suffered from the same problems as Almazett. Perhaps, being so disappointed, we were overly harsh in our judgement of Abla which, (http://1001dinners.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/ablas-restaurant-carlton.html ), as far as quality of the cooking, was much the same as Almazett.
Comments Score:12.75 /20