Passover Dinner at Zahav

[Beulah]

My husband and I took advantage of the Passover dinner offered at Zahav this week -- usually we don't eat out at all during Passover. The meal started off with Zahav's great hummous served with home-baked matzoh -- delicious. (I think Ashkenazi Jews are not supposed to eat hummous because it's made from legumes but I don't know about Sephardic Jews. Anyway, my spouse didn't say anything and he's more observant than I). This was followed by a selection of salads. Then came Yemenite chicken soup with excellent matzoh balls, large and tender. Smoked sable follwed -- very salty but good. The main course was coffee braised brisket served with potato kugel --excellent. Dessert was a chocolate matzoh cake with melting center, served with a cream on top. It did not taste like a Passover cake! Cost was $42/person plus $10 for a glass of wine for me.

I really enjoyed being able to eat out during a week in which I normally cook and cook and cook. This was the first time ever!

[barryg]

I also had he Passover dinner at Zahav. Easily the best meal I've had there (that's saying something), and one of the best meals I've had in the city overall.

As Beulah said, everything was excellent. The sable was the highlight for me--yes, it was salty, but had an incredibly rich smoky flavor. Probably the best smoked fish I've had anywhere. The brisket was great (and a very large portion). It was $42pp but we didn't leave hungry. I think this was a better deal than you'd get ordering a la carte off the menu.

[Boognish]

Thanks for posting Beulah. I've been meaning to throw in my 2 cents for a few days now. We felt the meal was exceptional. We started with two house cocktails--the marbled rye (pumpernickel and caraway infused rye with celery soda) and a Saz-arak, which is a twist on a traditional Sazerac made with arak liquor and orange bitters. Both were well-balanced and very potable with the marbled rye having more a thirst-quenching quality.

One of the things that's always impressed me with Mike Solomonov's cooking is his attention to detail, and I can't imagine a better showcase for this than the salatim selection that arrived with the hearth-baked matzoh and hummus. Frankly, I could have eaten these 8 little salads, condiments, and hummus all night long and left happy, especially with the fresh laffa bread. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to find some film to catch at the adjacent theater just to have an excuse to stop in and try them again. Selections included a twice-cooked eggplant, beet salad, marinated haricot vert, an amazing little cucumber salad in yogurt, and several more. Fantastic.

The dinner continued with the aforementioned matzoh ball soup. Unlike the poor deli staple with its watery broth and leaden matzoh ball, this was truly exceptional. The chicken broth was redolent with fenugreek giving it a slight, but not overwhelming, curry flavor while the matzoh ball was light as a feather.

The next course consisted of the smoked sable with charoset on one plate and the coffee-braised brisket with truffled potato kugel on the other. There was enough on the two plates for both of us, and we were provided with tongs and a spoon for transferring the beef and kugel to our plates. The smoked sable, which is traditionally Alaskan black cod, is smoked in-house. The charoset consisted mostly of date paste but contained a nice spicy kick: sweet/spicy/salty/smokey/awesome.

The brisket was braised perfectly to a pot-roast like consistency with fresh horseradish grated over top. I wasn't much of a fan of the kugel where the potatoes where slightly al dente and the truffle oil superfluous to my taste, but it was by no means bad.

Beulah described the cakes as well as I can. It was a nice, relatively light end to the dinner along with a glass of mint tea we ordered from the after-dinner menu.

In addition to the Passover meal, we tried the fried cauliflower with labaneh and the crispy haloumi with date paste and pine nuts. Fantastic bar food. The cauliflower in particular lived up to the hype (Food and Wine named it one of the top dishes in 2008). Not too greasy or heavy, it would pair perfectly with a cocktail.

So all in all, we enjoyed a tremendous introduction to Passover food in the hands of a dedicated and focused chef. Additional thanks to our server, Justin (I think...please excuse me if I'm incorrect), for guiding us through the unfamiliar territory that was our first Seder.