All restaurants have their recipes, a combination of ingredients engineered to show the punters as good a time as possible. Most of those recipes stay in the kitchen. Our Restaurant of the Year, voted for by the readers of OFM, has a recipe that fills the whole space. “I’ve been working in open kitchens these past seven years and I don’t know any other way,” says Tomer Amedi, head chef of the Palomar on London’s Rupert Street. “I like to make a connection with people.”
Since it opened in the summer of 2014, the Palomar has become renowned not just for its food, a brilliant, unselfconscious tangle of Mediterranean flavours and influences, but for what can only be called the “vibe” around the long counter up front. There’s the clatter of dishes thrust across the bar at diners, the call and response of head chef and cooks, not to mention the occasional shots of anise-flavoured arak, poured by Amedi and thrown back by diners and brigade alike with the Hebrew toast: “Here’s to life, good fortune and lots of healthy sex.”
It could be tiresome. It could be infuriating. What makes it remarkable is just how unforced it manages to be. “It’s about reading the guests,” Amedi says. “You have to know if it’s a date and they want to be left in peace, or if you need to help wake the date up. It’s a vibe and it differs from night to night. Some nights it’s quiet, and some nights everyone’s clapping and dancing.” And some nights Amedi is letting rip a drum fill across the hanging pots and pans. He planned on becoming a musician before the kitchen claimed him; the drumming is what remains. And if you don’t want any of that, there’s always the simple dining room up back.
The Palomar is the sibling of Machneyuda, a renowned restaurant in Jerusalem run by chef Uri Navon with his kitchen colleagues Yossi Elad and Assaf Granit. It was brought to Britain by former DJ Layo Paskin and his sister Zoe, north Londoners who had previously run bars and clubs together, including central London’s much loved The End. In 2009, they sold their businesses and were trying to work out what to do next. “Layo was DJing in Jerusalem and we were there brainstorming,” Zoe says. “And we kept going to Mechneyuda to eat.” The restaurant, set up in a down-at-heel market area that has swiftly become a focus for food businesses, is now at the heart of a group of bars and eateries. “It just made sense,” Zoe says.
“Food was a big part of our family growing up,” Layo says. What’s more, the food, with its broad influences not merely from within the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish traditions but also from Morocco, Syria, Iran, Iraq and many other points in between, had a cosmopolitan feel built for a London constantly open to new ideas. With pork and shellfish on the menu it is decidedly not kosher. “Added to that, the Palomar just can’t help having a family feel,” Zoe says. “Obviously Layo and I are brother and sister. But we also have people here who have worked with us since 1999, and Tomer’s wife Yael is running pastry.” They emphasise the point by putting the names of everybody working each week, both front and back of house, on the menu place mats.
A meal at the Palomar involves flavours which are built up, like colours layered across a canvas. A bowl heaped with sweet potato crisps to nibble at hides a slick both of cooling yogurt and a thick green relish of coriander and spice at the bottom. Slices of beetroot come with dollops of toasted goat’s cheese and a hazelnut and date syrup. Amedi introduces a hand-chopped dice of raw rump steak as a “tuchus tartare”, tuchus being the Yiddish for arse. It is piled with a roasted aubergine cream, vinaigrette made from tomatoes fired over the all-important Josper grill and toasted almonds.
There is an onion, filled with spiced minced beef, topped with tahini, then roasted; there is a quarter of a cauliflower, given its own turn through the Josper and flavoured with lemon butter, and their own labneh, a young cheese. Some of it, like the Jerusalem Mix, is a homage to the streets Amedi left behind. It’s a famous fry-up of chicken livers, hearts, veal sweetbreads, okra, tomatoes and tahini, invented by a Jerusalem street food seller when he’d run out of anything else to cook; a scoop of the best chopped liver with chrain (a mix of beetroot and horseradish) on a crisp of toasted challah feels like a tribute to someone’s Jewish mother.
And on it goes, a series of dishes big on flavour and small on carbs, plated on seemingly random bits of old crockery and silverware of the sort your great aunt always kept for best. And if you hanker after bread, there is always the pillow-soft loaf of Yemeni pot-baked bread, made by Yael. She turns out a blue cheese cheesecake, and a deep chocolate ganache, and a deconstruction of Eton mess which is all pert berries and crisp meringue.
For the most part, they say, the food in London matches that at the mothership in Jerusalem. “When we were first talking about bringing this here,” Amedi says, “I thought it would have to be more polished and posh, more European. But very quickly I realised that what was needed here was the true self.” Layo agrees: “We quickly understood that the more authentic it was the better it would be.”
I wonder aloud whether the pre-existing presence in London of Yotam Ottolenghi’s delis and restaurants, and Honey & Co, both drawing on the Israeli heritage of their key personnel, helped smooth the way. “When bringing something like this to London, you make a decision involving the head and heart,” Layo says. “And then you rationalise it. But let’s just say there was a certain magic to the timing.” What about availability of ingredients? “I spent five months before we opened seeking things out,” Tomer says. “The fact is, in Israel you fight for good supplies of meat, here you fight for good vegetables, but we’re fine.”
They’ve also had to deal with certain expectations. “You get some people surprised that it’s not all falafel and hummus. But we don’t want to be thought of as an Israeli restaurant or a Middle Eastern restaurant. We just want to be thought of as a good restaurant.” The general view is that it is a very good restaurant indeed. “We have been fortunate enough to be full from the very start,” Layo says. And for him, the OFM award really is the accolade that means the most. “It consolidates everything because it’s voted for by the people who eat here. We do what we do for our guests. No one else.”
As to the future, they are working on a Palomar cookbook, to be published next summer, and they have plans for another restaurant, one built solely around a counter. About that they won’t say any more. They have more than enough to be getting on with. “When we first planned to bring this restaurant to London,” Zoe says, “it felt a little like an arranged marriage, but it’s turned into a love affair.” Indeed it has. And right now there’s an awful lot of love for the Palomar.
The Palomar, 34 Rupert Street, London W1; 020 7439 8777; thepalomar.co.uk
The Palomar’s polenta Jerusalem-style recipe
In the Palomar, this dish is served in individual Kilner jars. If you don’t
have any, then a large ramekin will also work.
Serves 4
For the mushroom ragout
unsalted butter 2 tbsp
assorted mushrooms 250g, such as button, portobello, oyster or shiitake, torn by hand
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
For the polenta
milk 480ml
double cream 295ml
instant polenta 200g
unsalted butter 1 tbsp
parmesan cheese 1 tbsp, shaved
For the asparagus
asparagus 6 thin stalks, trimmed and cut into 7.5cm pieces
olive oil 2 tbsp
lemon 1 tbsp
To serve
parmesan cheese 2 tbsp, shaved
truffle oil for drizzling
For the mushroom ragout: heat the butter in a small heavy-bottomed frying pan.
Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until cooked, 25 to 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, make the polenta: bring the milk and cream to a boil in a large saucepan over a medium-high heat.
Reduce the heat to low and whisk in the polenta; cook, whisking constantly, until thickened, 5 to 7 minutes. If too thick, thin with a little milk or water. Whisk in the butter and parmesan. Season with salt; cover and set aside.
Prepare the asparagus by bringing a pot of water to a boil. Generously salt and return it to boil. Cook the asparagus in boiling water until tender-crisp, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain and transfer to a medium bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice; season with salt and pepper.
To serve, place 2 to 3 tablespoons of polenta in each of four 1-cup jars with lids. Add a tablespoon of mushroom ragout to each jar. Top with 3 to 4 asparagus pieces and 2 to 3 parmesan shavings. Drizzle each jar with truffle oil; cover jars and serve.
