Taboon

Taboon, located in an area that I rarely frequent, was the perfect pre-theater meal.  A tad out of the district but a nice brisk walk after dinner works just fine.   A Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant.  As my friend said, high end Israeli food. 

The big wood burning oven is the center piece of the restaurant when you walk in.  Most everything is cooked in there.  The rest of the place is light, airy, white and simple.  The menu consists of many small plates ( meze ) to start, salads, breads and main courses.  There are even Israeli wines on the menu which is nice to see. 

We shared everything.  Our first course was a variety of small plates.  The special of the night was an octopus dish, roasted in the oven, sliced in half and mixed with apples, anchovies, basil and mint.  Absolutely delicious.  Light and layers of many flavors that work perfectly together. 

We had the winter salad of greens, a few dots of goat cheese, sections of a blood orange, spicy walnuts, haricot verts and a walnut vinaigrette.  Simple.  The other small plate we had was the seafood cigars.  All baked in the oven.  Phyllo dough stuffed with a mixture of seafood, lemon preserve, mint and cilantro.  A bit too garlicky for me but well done.

For the main course, we spit the chicken.  This was really delicious and beautifully prepared.  A chicken breast, roasted in the wood burning oven with rolled chicken pieces on the side stuffed with oregano pesto and preserved lemon all served over a crunchy rice.  Delicious.

We weren't going to do dessert but was just curious.  We had 2 desserts to taste, literally.  The Lava Cake which is a dark molten cake that oozes out once your fork cuts into the dish.  Really dark and rich.  On the side was a small scoop of intense turkish coffee ice cream. The other dessert was a date sponge cake soaked, I mean soaked in Meyers rum.  Didn't love this one.  Very heavy handed.

The service was great, the food was quite good and a nice change of pace.  Will definitely return.  BTW, I did have a glass of the white Israeli wine.  Pretty tasty.