When French cooking meets the Israeli kitchen

A foie gras burger sandwiched between two halves of a chewy black macaron. A crispy, falafel-like ball filled with creamy lima bean purée. A composed salad with a root vegetable terrine scattered with pomegranate seeds, sweet garlic balls and tiny, woodsy mushrooms.

Those were three of the five amuse-bouche, the complimentary bite-sized appetizers served for the NIS 400 ($100) per person dinner at Jerusalem’s Mamilla Rooftop Restaurant Tuesday night, part of the French Embassy’s Third French Culinary Week.

The week-long event, hosted by the embassy, the French Institute of Israel and several other organizations, is being held through February 20 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Binyamina, Haifa and Tiberias, hosting 21 French chefs at local hotels, restaurants and wineries.

The top chefs all have one, two or three Michelin stars (the ratings offered by the French guide books of the same name), and include Simone Zanoni from Trianon Palace in Paris, the city’s first kosher restaurant with a Michelin star rating.

The French cuisine celebration also includes French products being sold in Tel Aviv’s Port Market through Friday, with stalls featuring French sausages, cheeses, chocolates, breads and pastries. The market’s restaurants will serve typical French dishes such as fried mussels, Croque Madame (that famed French ham, fried egg and cheese sandwich), Quiche Lorraine, bouillabaisse fish stew and other standards.

Across the country, fifty French products were also introduced into Mega supermarkets for the month of February. 

But the heart of the week focused on French meals, workshops and master classes on wines, cheeses and cooking at a variety of restaurants and hotels around the country. And, of course, fine French meals.

At the Rooftop, the casual, enclosed eatery at the top of the Mamilla Hotel, in-house chef Cobi Bachar partnered with Chef Marcel Ravin from Monaco’s Michelin-starred Blue Bay restaurant.

The two spent the bulk of the last week together, plotting their menu of truffle-wrapped steamed buns, raw tuna ravioli, thinly sliced rump steak laid gently on a nigiri-inspired mound of rice, and sea bass served with a bulgur salad and drizzled with a creamy, rose-colored hibiscus sauce.

“It’s always fun to do this kind of thing,” said Bachar. “The cooperation was great, and I came away with new ideas about what to serve and different raw materials.”

For Bachar, the idea of using hibiscus flowers in the sauce served with sea bass was inspirational, he said.

He handled the ideas for the muse-bouche, leaving most of the main dishes to Ravin. But he loved Ravin’s idea for a root vegetable mille-feuille, often known as a Napolean, the cream-filled, flaky dessert. This time it was made of paper-thin root vegetables, topped with a celery-flavored macaron half and a rounded slice of mushroom.

“That was all very interesting,” said Bachar. “A totally different treatment and combination of vegetables.”

Bachar said that Ravin was also introduced to different ideas in the Rooftop’s kosher kitchen.

“He loved the idea of cream tofu” — used in the hibiscus cream — “and the Israeli olive oil,” said Bachar.

The French chef had never considered the idea of fine cuisine in Israel, added Bachar.

“An event like this just opens your mind,” he said. “As chefs, we look at the opportunity as a way to link to other ideas and think about things differently in your own kitchen.”

The diners — couples and families dining for a special night out, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair with his wife and children — could choose from the restaurant’s substantial wine list, although drinks were not included in the NIS 400 a la carte price.

Dessert was, however, and Tuesday night offered two different options. The first was roasted pineapple with mandarin sorbet topped with coriander sorbet and a light, crunchy cookie of tapioca pearls.

The final pièce de résistance was the so-called Version of Bounty, a towering creation of dark chocolate ganache served in a cup of toffee chocolate topped with a coconut meringue and coconut sorbet. Dark, bitter and creamy, it offered the perfect ending to a sumptuous feast.

For more information and participating restaurants, go to the So French So Food website.