Dining Out / As creative and fun as ever

Herzliya Pituah's Zozobra is celebrating its 10th year now, and chef Avi Conforti and his team show not a single sign of growing weary. The atmosphere is as laid-back and charming as ever and the modern Asian cuisine is as creative and fun as always.

Modeled after Britain's Wagamama noodle bars, this is less an Asian noodle bar than a hyper-modern, social-architectural phenomenon. With its large seating area designed intentionally to eliminate any possible hint of intimacy and long, bench-lined tables that must be shared with strangers, this is the kind of place to which one comes as much for the atmosphere and the sense of action as for the food.

Young waitresses dressed in black, bearing miniature state-of-the-art computers in hand, make their way from table to table, their orders transmitted instantly to the efficient open kitchen, where the dishes are turned out with remarkable speed and efficiency on a combination of woks and frying surfaces.

As on previous visits, I decided to go with the flow, first by acknowledging that there are no appetizers or main courses here. Instead, order as few or as many small dishes as appeal to you, possibly including a noodle or rice dish or two. There is no predicting in what order those dishes will make their way to your table, but that is of no importance, for with chopsticks (or forks if requested), you simply start eating and keep at it until you reach your limit.

We decided to stick with small portions and return to favorites we've enjoyed before. Our meal started off with a portion of beef sashimi that featured tissue-thin slices of fine beef in soy sauce mixed with garlic and the yolk of a quail egg. The dish was a delight, but before we had finished, we were presented with cellophane noodles (translucent rice noodles) tossed with bits of shrimp, calamari and vegetables. Going back and forth between the dishes gave us the pleasure of tasting the contrasting and complementary flavors and textures.

The next dish to arrive was chicken wings in a tantalizing sauce of sour blood oranges and Szechuan pepper. Simultaneously sweet, sour and hot, with meat that was virtually falling off the bone, the dish added to our already good humor. From here it was on to offerings of cold chunks of meat in a sweet peanut sauce and chicken in a green curry sauce that included bamboo shoots, onion, eggplant and basil, cooked in the wok and served on a mixture of basmati and wild rice. These were followed almost immediately by a Cambodian curry of green noodles with chicken, pork and shrimp in a coconut sauce that was just spicy enough and a portion of curried udon noodles with vegetables, garlic, crumbled beef and dried curry.

By this point in the meal, it was clear that those not willing to dip their chopsticks into the common plates is simply not going to get much pleasure out of the meal, but this seemed to pose no problem. Wherever I looked, everyone in the restaurant had gotten fully into the mood of the place and its unique dining style. We continued with tea-smoked mullard breast served in a spicy and delicious ramen soup and a portion of bang-bang noodles - soba noodles with chicken, cucumber and a spicy peanut dressing.

From here we made our way to a Burmese salad in which purple cabbage, grapefruit, caramelized pecans and cilantro in a well-made citrus vinaigrette came together beautifully, to a Korean egg roll in which chopped beef, caramelized shallots and sesame seeds had been folded into a crisp wafer-like pastry shell, and to a most rewarding portion of gyoza dumplings filled with a mixture of beef, chicken and fresh ginger.

As at each of my previous visits, every portion I sampled was precisely as it should have been: simple, but full of flavor and imagination. Our bill (for two) came to a quite reasonable NIS 240 for the food alone. We also opted for Asahi beers to accompany our meal, each of which added NIS 24 to the cost. Well worth multiple visits.

Zozobra: 7 Shenkar Street, Herzliya Pituah. Tel.: (09) 957-87077. Open daily noon to midnight.

With an atmosphere that is sophisticated, light and airy, and offers a view of the sea, the Sheraton Tel Aviv Hotel is physically beautiful enough to host a truly fine restaurant. With service that remains as warm, polite, responsive and formal as it was during a visit six years ago, all seemed fully in order at the hotel's Olive Leaf restaurant for a fine evening of dining.

One of my two companions began his dinner with a tomato tarte tatin, an individual portion in which grilled tomatoes had been placed in a pastry shell together with eggplant, tofu and pesto before being baked. Unfortunately, the crust had become soggy, the eggplant was far too oily, and I never did manage to understand the purpose of the flavorless bits of tofu that were found here and there.

Another of us opted for a salad of mixed greens, sun-dried cherry tomatoes and strips of smoked veal in a mustard-lemon vinaigrette dressing. The greens were crisp and fresh, and between the tomatoes and smoked veal, the dish would have had a perfect balance of salt had not the dressing been so salty as to make the entire dish unappetizing. My choice, a trio of goose liver offerings, was somewhat better. It consisted of a plump and flavorful liver-filled ravioli; a medallion of goose liver that was first seared and then sauteed, and managed to keep most of its flavor even though it was not sauteed in butter because of the limitations of kashrut; and a goose liver mousse that was acceptable, but would have been far better without the overly sweet Sabra liqueur sauce that had been spooned over it. Before our main courses we were served a refreshing granita of Campari and grapefruit.

My choice for a main course was a grilled entrecote steak of about 300 grams. For reasons I did not understand, all the fat had been trimmed from the steak but a bit of gristle remained. Fortunately, the brown sauce served with the steak was well-seasoned and added flavor to the meat. The dish was accompanied by lubia (known to many as Turkish beans), sauteed potatoes, oyster mushrooms and spinach, each of which would have been more rewarding if they had been cooked with a bit of butter. The best parts of the dish, two baked marrow bones, were sprinkled with coarse salt and bursting with flavor.

One of my companions opted for the beef fillet. It was cooked to medium, as requested, but just a bit dry, tough and overly salty. It was served with similar accompaniments to those I received, but with the addition of oyster mushrooms that once again lacked the pleasure of having been sauteed in butter.

The best of the dishes we tried - and also the least expensive and least complex - was lamb kebab, served with grilled baladi eggplant and a well-made tehina sauce. The pine nuts mixed with the lamb added greatly to its charm.

We shared two desserts, including a chocolate volcano - a rich English-style cake filled with chocolate and heated through, so that the chocolate poured out at the touch of a spoon. The cake, the chocolate and the wild berry sauce with which it was served were rich and satisfying. The other dessert we had was a savarin, a rich yeast cake soaked with rum, which was also delicious. If the desserts had a fault, it was only that the vanilla ice cream served with the chocolate volcano and the coconut ice cream served with the yeast cake were pareve, and thus lacked the richness of true dairy ice cream.

Our food bill for three, including espressos, came to NIS 600. The wine of our choice, the 2005 Yiron of the Galil Mountain winery, added NIS 230. In such a pleasing atmosphere, one hopes for better dining. This restaurant is of interest primarily to those seeking a kosher restaurant.

The Olive Leaf: Sheraton Hotel, 115 Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv. Open Sun.-Thurs., noon to 2:30 P.M. and 7 P.M. to 10:30 P.M. Tel.: (03) 521-9300. Kosher.