Dining Out / Lacking in excitement

Located on Weizmann Street in the tall building that until recently was known as "Beit IBM," Tel Aviv's recently opened Uno sports striking and unquestionably beautiful tall plate glass windows that stretch at an angle from floor to a remarkably high ceiling. Beyond that, however, issues of taste and personal choice come into question.

The huge mural behind the long bar, for example, with its swirls, curves, blotches of yellow and green, and for some unknown reason, the word "pomodoro" spelled out in large letters, will be seen by some as eye-catching and by others as vulgar. Much is the same regarding the metal cages that hold several light fixtures; one almost expects to see topless dancers performing in them.

Design and atmosphere are not everything, however, and we entered with a sense of culinary optimism for the chef here is Nitzan Raz, who in addition to working in two of America's finest restaurants, Nobu and Jean George, pleased us in the past during his time at Sushi Samba.

The first thing to reach our table was an amuse gueule in the form of small cups of soup based on porcini mushrooms. Thick and creamy, with the nutty flavor of these highly prized mushrooms, the soup was a fine start.

Equally rewarding was the long, thin focaccia that was offered, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled over with coarse salt. The bread itself was delicious and small plates of olive oil with a few drops of balsamic vinegar and grated tomatoes were appreciated.

What was not appreciated was the third accompaniment to the bread, a puree of green peas that was largely devoid of flavor.

We were three for dinner and decided to share three different first courses. The first that we tried was a portion of cappelletti, which literally means "small hat."

To make these a dough is made of semolina flour and shaped into miniature hat-like shapes reminiscent of traditional wear in the Modena area of Italy.

Those are then filled, in this case with mushrooms, and spooned over with a sauce containing truffle oil, balsamic vinegar and then with grated pecorino cheese. The dish was more than acceptable but somehow lacking excitement, perhaps because the sauce was missing a bit of pepper and a small amount of red wine.

The second of our choices was the anziate, a dish in which cold, raw fillets of amberjack fish had been cut, somewhat thicker than in a carpaccio, and then sprinkled over with tomato seeds, grated lemon rind, olive oil and black charcoaled salt.

Also scattered over the fish were slices of fennel, described on the menu as a confit. Unlike a true confit that is boiled together with balsamic or another vinegar until soft, sweet and nearly caramelized, these had been merely lightly steamed and were neither sweet nor soft. The fish itself was fresh and flavorful but the topping ingredients simply failed to come together as a coherent whole.

The third dish was the panzanella, a salad of halved cherry tomatoes, wedges of regular tomatoes and balls of mozzarella cheese, tossed together with black olives, capers, slivers of red onion, arugula and croutons.

The menu stated that there was also celery to be found in the salad but we did not find a trace. The salad was frankly boring and failed seriously because the toasted croutons had absorbed most of the balsamic vinegar in the sauce and were thus too sharp.

As we had shared first courses, so we did with the mains, the first of which was a mushroom pizza. The thin crust was fine, just crisp enough and full of flavor, but the topping, of lightly sauteed porcini and Portobello mushrooms and arugula, fell somewhat flat. The mushrooms felt too watery and were lacking in flavor.

From here it was on to a portion of gnocchi with miniscule cubes of pumpkin, bits of pecans, and walnut oil. All might have been well had the gnocchi not tasted like compressed potato puree and the pumpkin bits not have been boiled until they were almost reduced to a liquid.

Our final main course sampling was of ravioli filled with pureed artichoke hearts and served with a sage and garlic cream sauce based on tomato seeds and white wine.

The ravioli dough was fine but both the filling and the sauce were bland, leaving one with no taste of artichokes or garlic. With both pasta dishes we were asked if wanted Parmesan cheese grated over it.

The cheese that arrived was not Parmesan but pecorino and not from Italy but from a local dairy.

We sampled three desserts, the first a tiramisu said to be in the style of Milan. Tiramisus are normally made by whipping together mascarpone cheese, eggs and sugar and chilling it. Egg-based cookies are then dipped in coffee and Marsala wine. In preparing the dish the cookies are placed on the bottom or around the sides of a serving glass, the mascarpone mixture is poured over and the dish is then sprinkled with dark cocoa or chocolate powder.

The dish we received had little resemblance to that, with no trace of Marsala wine in the crumbled cookies and the mascarpone mixture tasting as if someone forgot to add the sugar.

The second offering was a panacotta: A mixture of sweet cream, vanilla extract, sugar and gelatin that was too firm, too thick and had too much resemblance to a vanilla pudding in this case.

We fared better with a portion of chocolate truffles, the truffles rich and creamy and served with a well made creme patisserie, a dark chocolate sauce and small balls of tasty raspberry sorbet and chocolate mousse.

Our closing espresso coffees were strong and aromatic.

On a more positive note, throughout our dinner the service, although somewhat naive, was warm and responsive, the wine glasses used are of good quality and the wine list offers some very good Israeli wines at quite reasonable prices.

Our bill for three came to NIS 418, To that, because we had brought wine from home (the 2007 Grand Vin of Castel), a corkage fee of NIS 35 was added.

The prices are quite reasonable but overall the dishes served had too many faults and were lacking in excitement. The restaurant has just finished its "breaking-in" period so one hopes things will be better as the chef adjusts to his new kitchen.

Uno: Beit IBM, Weizmann St. 2, Tel Aviv. Tel: 03-6932005. Open Sun-Thurs 08:00-24:00, Fri 08:00-14:00 and Saturday from close of Shabbat-01:00. Kosher