Traklin (Tel Aviv) 01/2014

Many patrons think this place is fantastic. I understand why and I don’t agree with them.  It won an award last year (2012 actually) for originality and it certainly is quirky. They have a movie screen above one corner of one room and on some nights they show a movie in which foods are cooked or eaten and patrons are then served with those foods. Not much joy if you are in the front room, dominated by a very large bar, or in the back room, which is a bit dingy.

Another oddity is that they have no wine menu. All wines are Israeli, the owner, a wine enthusiast, has an interest in a winery and they always have these wines available. The response to 'may I see the wine list?' is do you prefer red or white, dry or sweet!! The reason given for the absence of the menu was because they change so often!!!
We drank a serviceable Merlot.

Another thing that I find offensive in a restaurant is the presence of the owners two dogs wandering between tables, too keen to accept affection or food.

Is the food fantastic? It was nice, but not out of this world. 
We started with a few entrees including a good chicken liver pate.
 
A mixed roast vegetable dish,

and slightly burned foccacio style bread. 
 
Although there are alternatives this is a meat restaurant and they do have very good meat including Kobe beef, a rarity in Israel. There is no problem about how your meat is cooked because you cook it yourself on extremely hot stones on your plate. That object, bottom left, is not a potato, it's the stone.

My sirloin came just seared and I was able to cook it to taste. It was on a bed of potato and fried onion and garnished with rocket. Very satisfying.

Chicken salad was just OK, not something I would like to go to a good restaurant to eat.

Chicken liver is another dish it is too east to make at home,

Sesserts were worth missing, a very ordinary sorbet fruit salad,

and a weird version of Mahalabi with walnut and honey! 
Score:13.5 /20