Pescara
Dairy Fish Chef restaurant in the Eatalia Emporium

May 2024
What is that big brown building in the courtyard of the BSR complex on Totzeret Haaretz St?
The one with the big Eatalia sign on the side of the building.

Eatalia is a culinary emporium that glorifies Italian cuisine. The entrance level of the buidling called the Piemonte floor, has a coffee shop, pizza stand, a wine and cheese shop and a beautiful display of Israeli and imported goods. The three main restaurants are on the second floor. As the escalator takes you up you get a bird’s eye view of the attractive shops on the Piemonte floor. More about Eatalia below.

We came to Eatalia for the Pescara fish restaurant, one of three restaurants on the second floor of the Eatalia complex. The Joya D’Eatalia restaurant is the casual restaurant for family dining. The La Brace grill restaurant is the Italian fine dining meat restaurant. Pescara fish restaurant takes its place somewhere between casual and fine dining.

Pescara
Chef Cobi Bachar is the culinary director of the entire Eatalia complex. This is a man who knows fish. Chef Cobi founded the popular Happy Fish restaurant at Jerusalem’s Mamila Hotel. He brings his experience and creative ideas to the Pescara restaurant. Restaurant manager Elliott, proficient in both Hebrew and English, showed us the ropes and suggested his favorite dishes.

We started with the Jasmine cocktail from the bar, a delicious gin and Passiflora-based drink on ice. There is a limited selection of cocktails on the menu, but you don’t need more. We were then served a basket of fresh, warm, soft bread, with a crispy crust, cut in thick pieces, country-style, and served with butter and olives.

Pescara is an Italian dairy and fish restaurant. In addition to a great selection of fish dishes, there is a menu of pasta dishes. The pasta at Pescara is all hand made from scratch, in house. This includes the gnocchi, which is the specialty pasta of this restaurant.

On this visit we chose fish dishes for the restaurant namesake. A shared starter of fish salad, a basket of bread and two main fish dishes was a full meal. I believe that an appetizer should whet the appetite and not overshadow the meal. My dining companion and I often share one starter, to leave us wanting a main course. The Crispy Sea Bass (Levrak) Salad starter is a sprightly salad with leafy greens topped with roasted almonds crusty coated fish nuggets. The salad had a sweet-spicy dressing with a kick that you only feel after a few bites.

I have to confess that I am a self-professed fish lover. I will take a good fish dish over meat any day. I believe that if you don’t like fish, it is because you never had it prepared well. First, the fish must be fresh. The fish we had at Pescara was in the Mediterranean that morning and on the plate in the evening. Secondly, the chef has to know how to prepare fish. This takes skill. It is not like meat that you put on the grill and ignite. A good fish dish has to be flavored with the right herbs and spices and cooked for exactly the right amount of time.

Our two fish dishes, which were our main courses, both met these criteria. At manager Elliott’s suggestion I chose the Sea Bass fillet on a cream base. The single fillet was browned on top and served on a delicious creamy sauce. What is that cream made of? Cauliflower, it turns out, is the secret ingredient. Use the bread to sop up the creamy base, Elliott suggested. You don’t want to miss a drop.

New dishes are added to the menu periodically. This dish is so new, it does not yet appear on the printed menu. But since they started serving it, Elliott said, it is his favorite dish. I agree that this was quite a spectacular dish.

My companion chose the Locus skewer, Elliot’s other favorite dish. One long impressive skewer of grilled Locus cubes is served on a bed of roasted mangold leaves, on a buttery corn cream sauce. The Locus was less sweet than my sea bass, but the grilled fish, the roasted mangold and creamy corn with butter was an agreeable combination. Here too, the fresh bread was just what we needed to clean the plate.

Pascara has a modern industrial-looking no-frills design. The cutlery and the dishes are in the same modern, minimalist style. The dining tables are set along picture windows overlooking Jabotinsky Rd, a major Petach Tikva thoroughfare, dotted with high-rise office buildings that have come to characterize this part of the city. As the sun set behind us, the shadow of the BSR building was reflected on the steel and glass building across the street, for a very urban and modern effect. Welcome to the new Petach Tikva.

The restaurant has a private room that can accommodate 25 guests. It is equipped with all the electronics.

Getting There: Park in the multi-level underground car park under the BSR center. Take the elevator up to the large outdoor square on the ground floor.

Eatalia Emporium

The Israeli Eatalia is a beautifully designed two-story closed food emporium at the edge of the courtyard of the BSR building at Tozeret Haaretz street in Petach Tikvah. We were struck by the unique architecture and spiffy interior design. This is the only Kashrut-certified Eatalia emporium in the world. The entire market, all the foods and all the imported goods are under the kashrut supervision of Rabbanut Petach Tikva.

Chef Cobi Bachar is the head chef and culinary director at Eatalia. All the foods and all the restaurants in the emporium are under his lead. As Eatalia is new, Chef Bachar is building the culinary concepts from the ground up. The Chef is eminently qualified for this challenge, coming from the Mamila Hotel, where he presided over all their restaurants.

Food, food and more food. Eatalia is two floors of Italian foods. The entrance level, called The Piemonte, after the region in northwestern Italy, has a coffee shop, a pizza stand, cheeses and wine, to eat in or take home. Tables dividing the sections are laden with goods for sale, imported from Italy. There is olive oil, tomato sauces, pasta, pizza flour, and more, and as a nod to their address on Tozeret Haaretz St (“Made in Israel Street”), some of our own Israeli wines.

Escalator up one floor to wine-and-dine at a group of Italian restaurants. For casual dining, there is the Joya D’Eatalia dairy restaurant, La Brace Grill for fine dining and the Pescara fish restaurant in between.

Parking: Ample parking in the underground car park.

From the Menu:
Dining at Pescara is not cheap but you get what you pay for. A quality fish dish can cost the same or more as a mid-range main dish at a meat restaurant. And so, at Pescara, main fish dishes all come in above one hundred shekels.

Jasmine cocktail (NIS 48)
bread basket NIS 28
Crispy Sea Bass (Levrak) Salad (NIS 68)
Sea Bass fillet on a cream base (NIS 142)
Locus skewer (NIS 126)