January 2023
Kiko Meat Restaurant
If you visit Kiko once, you will be back. Kiko is a fast and easy restaurant. It is easy to get there, easy to park, easy to choose your meal and easy on the pocket book. Kiko is one of several shops in the small shopping center on Yanovsly Street in Armon Hanatziv. There is ample free street parking behind the shopping center on Luppo Street

Kiko is a restaurant for folks who like meat. This is a clean and pleasant no-frills restaurant where you can get a delicious burger at half the price that you will pay in most restaurants. There is a a great selection of meats served on platters with side dishes or as sandwiches. Non meat eaters will appreciate the wide selection of very fresh vegetables and the ability to configure your own salad.

Step right up to the counter and place your order. Take a tray and flatware, a napkin and a drink, and have a seat inside alongside the picture windows facing the promenade or outside on the patio.

Our visit to Kiko Restaurant:

We stopped into Kiko for lunch one mid-week afternoon. There is a large menu on the wall behind the counter, and a pile of paper take-home menus. One man behind the counter making salads and sandwiches and cooking the meat on the grill behind him. There are platters with side dishes and there are sandwiches.

The salad ingredients are displayed behind the glass in an attractive array of fresh ingredients. The server behind the counter puts your order together before your very eyes.

Kiko offers sandwiches in three types of bread: Iraqi Lafa bread, French baguette and hamburger rolls. The baguesstes, baked on site, are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, as the French make them.

We ordered a large vegetable salad (NIS 35), and a baguette of shawarma, which  comes with a small salad. The vegetable salad began with a layer of lettuce on the bottom, and then the server asked what I wanted on top. I began to name the usual suspects, like cucumbers and fried cubes of eggplant, but I just wasn’t being adventurous enough for him, and he began to add pickles, olives, chopped tomatoes with herbs, etc. We quickly had an attractive bowl of Mediterranean meatless fare.

I was puzzled by the shawarma listed on the menu, as I did not see the classic spit with layers of meat and fat turning behind the counter. The server explained that shawarma refers to how the meat is cut and cooked, not the turning spit. They cook the meat to order for each customer on a plancha, a hot grilling surface, and add the appropriate spices. In a few minutes we were creating the sandwich together. Then he asked me if I like it spicy. Of course I do. So he added a dollop of pickled lemon. It wasn’t fiery hot, but had a pleasant flavor on top of the perfectly cooked veal shawarma.

The large salad turned out to be a bit too spicy for my companion, so  he gave me a more moderate small salad with my sandwich, and we traded. She liked the small salad, and I enjoyed the variety of more flavorful vegetables with my baguette (NIS 45 including the small salad). We only wanted a light lunch, so we passed on the French fries, onion rings, chicken wings and many other side dishes available.

I truly enjoyed my shawarma baguette, but I may have missed my opportunity to have their hamburger. We spoke to other customers who come to Kiko regularly for that, and it really looked attractive. I guess I’ll have to come back.

Parties and get togethers at Kiko Meat