Last update - 00:00 12/10/2006
Dining Out / Skewered by delight
By Daniel Rogov
The hamburger joint went up-market with Herzliya's Agadir and Cinema City's Black Bar and Burger, and falafel joined the trend with the opening of Malkot Hafelafel. It seems that the time has come to upgrade the once humble shipudia grills, those not always spotlessly clean and usually super-informal places where various meats are served on skewers. And so it is that Agenda opened in Tel Aviv Port, possibly the first absolutely grease-free shipudia in the known universe.
The place is done primarily in greys and blacks, with a few color highlights, many of those in plastic and with an artificial waterfall encased in a huge glass wall and a video screen as large as most living rooms. Agenda is not so much vulgar as amusing, one might say enjoyable, with its large tables, comfortable chairs, a few booths tucked away here and there and informal but fine service. It is a rather pleasant and comfortable place in which to dine if one is in the mood for the daredevil sports and soccer on the video screen.
As should be expected, diners receive large paper placemats and paper napkins, but that is in keeping with the cuisine offered.
My meal opened with a rich selection of mezes, all-in-all so generous that it made me wonder if I could go on to any kind of main course. Among the very best of the samplings: a well-made and lemon-rich tabbouleh; green peppers in a piquant tomato sauce; a dish of three, piping-hot, green falafels (the exterior crisp enough to make a snapping noise to the flick of a fingernail); and several eggplant salads, one with techina, another tossed with grilled red peppers and a third with mayonnaise. As good were chunks of fried eggplant in a hot tomato sauce and a slice of eggplant coated in bread crumbs and deep fried, fine cole slaw, a salad of red cabbage with mayonnaise and a salad of grilled and marinated green peppers. Even the egg salad and the cherry tomatoes in a well-made vinaigrette were good. Just about everything that I tried proved a distinctive cut above the kinds of salads one usually anticipates in such places, and the only salads that disappointed were the too commercial corn salad, unseasoned diced beets and a Moroccan carrot salad lacking the hotness one expects.
With the salads came a large, very hot, freshly baked and tissue-thin lafa bread, a fresh one appearing when I finished off the first one. The salads, too, would have been refilled but that simply would have been too much.
In order to do a fairly broad tasting, I continued with a portion of the moussaka. It was not at all the traditional dish of Greece - layers of minced lamb, eggplant, chopped onions and spices, cheese and sliced tomatoes, all topped with bechamel sauce, but it still pleased me, though it may have not earned the traditional name. What was served was a thick slice of fried eggplant generously covered with chopped, spiced beef and finally topped with a slice each of tomato and raw onion. Not baked in the oven and without even a trace of cheese, the dish may have had more in common with a hamburger. However, the dish - served with a simple but pleasant Thousand Island sauce - surprised by being rich and full of flavor.
I continued with two skewers of meat. The first held plump chicken livers that had been salted nicely before being grilled and wisely cooked so the livers retained their internal pinkness. The second held plump kebabs, well-seasoned and boasting the addition of a few fresh herbs and a generous number of pine nuts. Both skewers were rewarding.
My bill came to a very reasonable NIS 103, to which a half liter of Tuborg draught beer added NIS 18. In view of the pleasant ambience, the friendly and responsive service and the overall quality and generosity of the dishes I sampled, this is a place definitely worth visiting when it's such grill and salads you desire.
Agenda: 3 Hata'arucha, Tel Aviv Port. Open daily 12:00-04:00. Tel. (03) 544-4418.