Joe's Cafe (Yehud Israel) 07/2018

This is another franchise which we ate at several times in the Canyon Mall. 
The mall is particularly pleasant with very good quality shops. It has an open clean feeling, not too crowded and not too noisy although there are always children running about. Joe's is very popular and we sometimes had a short wait to get a table. They seem to have an endless number of young, attractive wait staff with cute aprons

.

It's light and airy 

and quite decorative.

Food is typical Israeli café style with dips,

pizzas omlettes, salads

and cakes

Score: 13.5/20

Zinc (Yehud, Israel) 07/2018

 Set in an industrial area of Yehud and rather isolated from other shops and restaurants Zinc depends on word of mouth for its continued success. It occupies a long room, 

simply outfitted with large wooden tables 

making plenty of space for their food. On entry there are very comfortable couches and arm chairs for waiting clients.

which we made good use of.

There are a few window boxes with scenes from Venice the appearance alters with changing lighting. 

No food stained menus here. We each had an IPad 

with an index and descriptions, prices and photo's of the food which could be enlarged.

We started our meal with a mushroom risotto which was excellent.

and a roast cauliflower, 

which was dry and tasteless.
Bread, as is so often the case, was moorish.

and the Israeli salad was absolutely typical of what is served at every café and restaurant in the country.

 For main courses two stood out, sea bass,

two good sized fillets, baked and served either with mashed potatoes or green beans. Cooked, as requested, as lightly as possible on the creamiest mash, they were very good. T-Bon as the menu put it,

four veal chops on a wooden platter, came with chips

They were well seasoned and super juicy. 
We drank a reserve Merlot.

A créme brulée came as a sandwich with the brulée between biscuits. Regardless of the unusual presentation it was excellent.

They must have liked us because they offered an additional dessert, their cheese cake

which was also excellent, moist and creamy in texture.It would be unusual in Australia for restaurants to happily pack up left over food for patrons to take home but in Israel it is acceptable everywhere, 
This was quite an expensive meal at about A$100 per person, and certainly on of the better meals we have eaten here. Still, at the end of the day I would much prefer a meal at Topolopompo to two meals here.
Score 14.5/20

Chooka Asian Kitchen (Yehud Israel) 07/2018

We felt like a Chinese meal and our host suggested this franchise. It's an open air place with one table inside. There's an open suchi bar at one end of the room,

where suchi are made to order,

and a counter with eight wok style pans of food - sweet sour chicken, 

chicken with vegetables, 

beef with vegetables a vegetable dish of peppers, 

potatoes!, white rice, fried rice and noodles.

They offer a meal deal, one protein serve and two others, a soup or spring roll 

and a non alcoholic drink for about A$20.
The place was hot, no air conditioning, and noisy. The guy who served was very obliging but there's not much more that we could say about the place. The only distinctly Asian thing about the place is the name, or at least the sub title. Perhaps the sushi was OK but we didn't have that. 
The photo's of the food do not look particularly attractive and it didn't look or taste any better on the plate.
At least, as the three letters top right tell us, 

it's kosher. MSG doesn't get a mention, they've probably never heard of it.

This would have been the worst meal I have eaten since I did National Service in the army 60 years ago.

Score: Anything would be too much.

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