Last update - 00:00 12/09/2007
Eastern European nostalgia
By Ronit Vered
They regaled us with stories that made us salivate - about whole ducks roasted in their own fat, kreplach, hot knishes filled with potatoes, jellied aspic. But restaurants of this kind that serve an Eastern European menu are gradually disappearing. In the ones that remain, there is a nostalgic longing - one of the greatest stimulants for the taste buds.
Mul Eden. The founding generation of Poles never went out to a restaurant; their attitude was "Why eat out when you can eat at home?" The children of those Poles, who are already respectable elderly people themselves, are the regular customers of Dedi Shaulsky who cooks, serves small shots of vodka and also brings saucers of schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) and three types of horseradish to the table: red, white (wonderful and hot as fire), and delicate orange (with carrots). Among the main dishes: veal schnitzel, goose gizzards and leg of goose with soft pinkish meat that falls off the bone. But the best thing is to order a generous platter for two of the hits of the old Jewish shtetl: elzele, goose neck filled with flour and fried in grease (originally a poor people's dish from the shtetl that now seems like an exotic delicacy); klops (chopped meat loaf containing hard-boiled egg); kishke; and plump kreplach.
Maayan Habira is not kosher, and some complain about the taste "that used to be" and is no longer the same, but Maayan Habira is still one of the only remaining vestiges of the Eastern European pub. You can sip cool beer and munch on chopped liver, pickled herring, half-pickled cucumbers and home-smoked meats: leg of goose, smoked pork or beef pastrami with spicy horseradish.
Shmulik Cohen. Today very few ducks are raised in Israel; the process of pulling out their feathers makes raising them difficult and expensive. But here, ducks and geese like the ones found in the shtetl continue to make an appearance, in coarsely chopped egg salad with grivelach (crispy fried chicken skin with onion), and in plates of assorted thighs, wings and smoked breast. There is also chicken soup and home-distilled vodka and liqueurs. Sometimes, along with dessert, they bring out an old-fashioned Polish glass bowl on a tall base, containing everything that grandmothers used to take out of hiding for the grandchildren: round chocolate bonbons, tiny biscuits, toffee and hard fruit candies.
Misedet Hamercaz. A small, modest restaurant established in the 1950s that has remained almost the same, to the delight of the elderly regulars of Nes Tziona, who recall its salad days.
Vienna Restaurant. A crowded delicatessen in which Mr. Selig and his family prepare traditional Jewish foods. There are a few crowded tables, but it's better to take the food home.
17 Hazon Ish, Bnei Brak, 03-6188526