Kosher Focaccia Bar Hamoshava

Focaccia Bar is an Italian meat restaurant. We have not seen that combination in a while, and it is a welcome addition to the kosher culinary landscape. The restaurant offers a varied menu that includes meat, fish and a wide range of vegetable dishes.

As its namesake suggests, the Focaccia Bar menu offers a great selection of Focaccia dishes. The Focaccia is baked in the on-site taboun oven and is served with olive oil, zatar, fresh sea salt and garlic. The classic Focaccia is just that: taboun-baked flat bread with herbs and spices. Other choices range from vegetable Focaccia to the Focaccia baked with roast beef. We favor the Focaccia baladi, baked with grilled eggplant and tehina.

The menu starts with a selection of specialty openers to whet your appetite. Start with chopped liver, beef carpaccio, or ceviche. These high-end openers are the chef's specials for the feinshmeker diner, and are not to be missed.

With a nod to the Italian kitchen, the menu offers a selection of pasta dishes with fish, meat, and a creative combination of vegetables and nuts. The fish pasta dish with salmon chestnuts, spinach, artichokes and tomatoes caught my eye. Meat past dishes include pasta with Ragu sauce that contains chunks of veal, and pasta with grilled chicken breast. Mixing cultures, the menu also offers an Asian noodle dish with coconut cream sauce.

For your main course enjoy a great variety of meat and fish dishes. The menu offers the classics including Entrecote, pargit and shnitzel. Then there are the specialty dishes including Musaka made with eggplant, spinach and veal. Or the "meurav" mix of organ meats. Here's one you may not get at home: chicken marinated in shallots, oregano, honey and plums, baked in the taboun oven and served on a bed of rice.

Enough said. Visit the kosher Focaccia Bar in the Moshava open from noon and enjoy fresh ideas and fresh Italian dishes in a unique environment.

From Our Readers
Date: July 2013. Submitted by: Nate. Description: Booked-in with a group of 15 American tourists on Motsei Shabbat, 6 July. Asked, on booking, to be seated outside, and this request was honored--one large table, off in a corner, so that we had relative privacy in an otherwise VERY BUSY restaurant. Great service--if not mistaken, the server was Maya. Great food too--all served relatively-quickly, hot, and more-or-less together. Clients knew this was my first try with this new restaurant. I asked afterwards what they thought--if it's a 'keeper' for future groups--and the answer was resoundingly 'YES'. So, I'll be back. Congrats to Erez and the staff--keep up the great work!