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.