Open Sunday - Thursday: Lunch hours 12:00 pm till 5:00. Dinner hours 5:00pm till 11:30pm. Friday till one hour before Shabbat and after Shabbat. Closed Shabbat.

June 05
Gabriel Restaurant is the new kid on the block! The "block" is Shimon Ben Shetach Street (opp Betuach Leumi), where Gabriel has the edgy location between trendy Shlomzion Hamalka and classic Nachalat Shiva. The kitchen is classic French fusion.
"Hey - We have such an array of fresh produce that it would be a shame not to incorporate it into the menu!"
So, for example, with the freshly baked bread they serve an amazing eggplant spread.

The restaurant is situated in a beautifully renovated old Jerusalem building. There are two floors; the upper is a cozy bar area, which could easily host private parties. The Jerusalem stone is softened with lovely soft furnishings that creates a warm, understated décor. The music is classical, Jazz and sounds from nature.

FOOD
As a dedicated Jerusalem street walker, I happened on Gabriel Restaurant on the first day that they opened! I wished Dedi and Zohar good luck, we drank lechaim and tasted their business lunch. Three weeks later, I am back to report that the menu has been finalized, and, I have now tasted a good part of it, together with my companions, one of whom is a renowned restaurateur, one a recent graduate of a chef's course, myself, and two other foodies.

The food at Gabriel is outstanding both in taste and presentation. I was won over immediately by the presentation of the antipasti. There is an artist in the kitchen with a good eye for shape, color and design. I will leave this description , so that you too, can go "wow"! We enjoyed the veal carpacchio appetizer, which is paper thin slices of veal marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garnished with tomato seeds and coarse salt. We also tasted a hot mushroom salad, zucchini soup, house pate and goose liver in a date sauce with raisins and pistachio nuts. Everything was a delight for the eyes and the taste buds.

For our main courses, we had the Denis, which was the fish of the day,Tornado ossini, Beef Wellington and Chicken Cordon bleu. The latter is a slice of chicken breast stuffed with breast of goose and deep-fried in a packo crumb batter. For those in the know, Packo crumbs are Japanese breadcrumbs and make an extremely crispy coating. The Beef Wellington was very impressive and a delight to eat. All the dishes were served with sauces - as in French cuisine - that were all unique and complemented the dishes nicely. The red wine sauce with cinnamon was a favorite as well as the mushroom and port sauce. The main courses were so pleasing, that the pureed potatoes that accompanied the meal were unnecessary for all but carb addicts. On second thought, they were great for sopping up every last drop of sauce!.

As in any fine restaurant, there were nice touches like sorbet to clear the palate between courses.

The dessert menu is rather limited but reflects thought and quality. Eschewing artificial creams or margarine, the desserts include sorbets, real fruit pies, crepe Suzette, and of course chocolate cakes which do not need any milk products for enhancement.

We indulged ourselves with a bottle of Carmel Zarit dry wine. This is a new series of wines from Carmel of estate wines,i.e., from one vineyard. In this case, it is Zarit, a moshav on the Lebanese border, where many of our sons patrolled. Just adds a little more meaning when you know exactly where this wine is coming from.

Good service will make a bad meal reasonable, but bad service can ruin the best of meals. The service at Gabriel was efficient and friendly but kept the right distance. We are always amazed at how one chef and staff can get five main courses out at the same time and all are hot!

Prices of main courses range from 61-169 shekels. The high end is for 500g of chateaubriand. A complete dinner is about 150 shekels a person. Expensive, but worth every shekel.

BOTTOM LINE
The choice of fine kosher restaurants in Jerusalem is expanding so rapidly. Gabriel certainly adds serious competition to the existing choices. Definitely worth a special trip up to Jerusalem!

Gabriel Restaurant offers a steal of a business lunch including home baked rolls and two courses for NIS 42-71. Some of the main courses to choose from at lunch are sinta(sirloin) on a bed of chestnut and port sauce, Pargit, grilled in chilie and coconut sauce and fillet steak in Vermouth and mushroom sauce (71 shekels at lunch, including a first course).

From Our Readers:
Submitted by: briang. Date: February 2006. Description:This restaurant’s bid to be viewed as the best restaurant in Jerusalem got a lot stronger after our visit there this week. We’ve eaten in 1868, Canela, La Regence, La Guta etc etc and feel that we are in a position to really compare and judge.

Our welcome to Gabriel was both efficient and warm and our waitress immediately decided and responded to those who wanted to speak Ivrit and those who were more comfortable in English. Left alone for a few minutes to chat and consider the menu, before being bombarded with the specials was another thoughtful touch. I was particularly impressed with the knowledge of our waitress when it came to the choice of wines and again, she thoughtfully sought my views on whether to decant or not. In [another restaurant], our wine was ruined by the specialist sommelier who was totally ignorant about Israeli wines and more particularly how to handle them. We chose the Yatir Forest which was 280 NIS a bottle. The decanted it beautifully and served it sensitively, again judging who were the shikerers and who were not.

We had a range of starters between the five of us including salads, raviolis and chicken bits. We were surprised to see such generous proportions on beautifully presented plates. The food was all fresh, tasty and well seasoned. One of the dressings for a salad was pretty harif and a warning would have been welcome. The ravioli starter stuffed with sweet potato was particularly innovative and came in a warm floaty sauce. The sauce was so appealing, that in the absence of spoons on the table, we opted for another bread roll to sup it up!

When the main courses arrived, some of us wished we had had less of the starters. Again, the portions were actually appropriately described as massive. The only exception was the ravioli as a main course which came with inadequate amounts of the listed salmon and was quite disappointing. The mallard was nothing short of spectacular being both succulent but well cooked and in a great semi-sweet sauce. The beef dish (spelt Beff on the menu) was eaten by probably the fussiest pickiest eater I know and he raved about it. The chicken dish had to be halved and eaten via a doggy bag the next day. It was equally succulent and piquant the next day which is quite a tribute to the cooking. We didn’t have the grey mullet but seeing it pass by, it would have been a great choice too.
Nobody wanted a dessert but it seemed a shame to stop in mid stream so I can say the sorbet and the passion fruit parfait were winners.
Not cheap, but if you want great food, great service, a lovely ambience, Gabriel gets my vote as the best meal in town.

Submitted by: donbrand. Date: October 2005. Description: My wife and I have just come home after trying the business lunch at Gabriel and I simply felt the need to write about it. Out of the broad range of choices (including numerous fish as well as meat and chicken dishes) for appetizers my wife chose chicken livers in a plum sauce while I tried the the roast beef. For the mains we ordered the medallions of beef in a white vermouth and mushroom sauce and the entrecote. Suffice it to say that in both of our opinions the taste of the Gabriel business lunches was clearly superior to that of any other restaurant outing we have had in Jerusalem. But more than this, the entire dining experience, including the service, the neatness, the seating comfort and the ambience, was simply gemutlich; it was just so pleasant. We cannot recommend Gabriel more highly.