Brunch 24/7 at Benedict
Review: Benedict serves up innovative dishes and sumptuous meals around the clock; its restaurants in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Rishon Lezion are “all about breakfast” - and clearly all about quality.
For close to a decade now, the Benedict brand has been carving out a respectable niche in the greater metropolitan Tel Aviv restaurant market, starting in the heart of the big city and then expanding northwards to Herzliya and southwards to Rishon Lezion. Their winning formula is based on tempting dishes suitable for eating morning, noon or night - hence, the timeless brunch.
The restaurants’ creativity begins with the list of brunch cocktails: no fewer than five varieties of mimosa, and six other mixed drinks. The alcohol menu, available in multiple languages, like the food and dessert menus, also opens a window on Benedict’s reasonable prices: all 11 are priced at a mere NIS 29, about the lowest price for a cocktail I’ve seen in the country. A complimentary mimosa is even included with the order of certain brunch dishes.
An example of one of these drinks is the pumpkin soda: sparkling water flavored with Benedict’s homemade pumpkin syrup and spiked with Wild Turkey bourbon. Garnished with a cinnamon stick, the result is a smooth, mellow and slightly warming cocktail, ideal for the current winter season.
Probably the best bargain for a couple, however, is the Benedict champagne: an entire bottle of Brut Cava, served with carafes of peach, pineapple and orange juice. It’s like mix-and-match make-your-own-mimosa; and the bottle stays in a bucket on the table -- all for NIS 69.
Many of the main dishes on the menu come with Benedict’s unlimited basket of breads - actually soft rolls - comprising four distinct varieties: pumpkin (with a distinctive corn flour crust), multi-grain (studded with seeds), brioche and ciabatta. The excellent fresh rolls are served with European butter, Nutella and fruit jam. It takes a great deal of restraint not to fill up on these.
There is also a Small Plates section on the menu, from which our friendly and knowledgeable waiter recommended the intriguingly named Tower of Babel - which turns out to be Benedict’s unique take on sabich: slices of fried eggplant and grilled tomato, sandwiched between layers of potato fritters, and the entire stack topped with crumbled hard-boiled egg and drizzled with a bold tahini-cum-amba sauce. The interplay of all these flavors is terrific, and the sauce unforgettable; next time I’ll remember to ask whether I can buy a bottle to take home.
We also followed our waiter’s suggestion with regard to a main course, ordering a house specialty: egg balls - scrambled eggs formed into round dumplings, and served in a choice of several different enticing sauces. We chose the egg balls with spinach and onions in a cream sauce with goat cheese - an extremely rich concoction that complemented the eggy spheres nicely, and was made to be mopped up with the great rolls from the unending basket.
This dish comes with an unremarkable green salad - a wedge of iceberg lettuce with sliced tomato and slivers of radish, dressed with a rather ordinary vinaigrette.
It was quite difficult narrowing down a second choice of main course from among the specials, which rotate every couple of months, and the regular fixtures on the menu; we finally settled on the steak and eggs, really a variation on the world-famous Philly steak sandwich. In this Benedict version, shredded rump steak that had been sautéed with onions is stuffed into a long ciabatta roll, hoagie-style, and smothered in melted Gouda cheese. Two fried eggs with yolks a bright orange color were perched on top of the overflowing sandwich, while grilled cherry tomatoes liberally seasoned with black pepper and an impressive stalk of white onion accompanied it. A saucer of very zesty Thousand Island dressing is also provided, but the scrumptious steak, eggs and cheese combination needed no additional condiment.
The side dish was french fries, served with garlic aioli and ketchup for dipping. The fries are very much in the McDonald's mold: thin, crispy - and addictively tasty.
The dessert options were rather unusual: there are small “tastes” of sweet treats, perfect for finishing off a very full meal. On the other hand, the dessert menu also contains options that exist as main courses: pancakes (or mini-pancakes) and French toast.
We chose one dessert from each category. In the former group, two tiny morsels - each literally the size of just two or three bites- comprise one order; the pair we chose consisted of one “chocolate indulgence” - milk chocolate mousse encased in a ball of dark chocolate icing - and one minuscule piece of cheesecake (called cheese mousse on the menu). The chocolate was reminiscent of a very good truffle with a gossamer interior, leaving you wanting more; the cheesecake was a disappointment, albeit not a major one, given its negligible size.
Pancakes won out as our choice in the second category - blueberry pancakes, to be precise. The stack of three pancakes with genuine maple syrup was everything one could ask for: thick, fluffy, and delicious. Sweetened blueberries as a topping, plus.fruit salad on the side, were an added bonus.
Dessert was washed down nicely with pleasant Hausbrandt coffee, a brand I was not familiar with, but one obviously chosen after meticulous scrutiny, by a management that definitely knows what it’s doing.
Benedict’s slogan is “all about breakfast” - and clearly all about quality, at all hours of the day and night.
Benedict
Not kosher
Etsel 1, Herzliya Pituah (two sister branches are in downtown Tel Aviv and one in Rishon Lezion)
Tel. (03) 686-8657, ext. 3
