Ten years ago a book appeared in France celebrating olive oil, burnt eggplant soup and stuffed artichokes. Jerusalem (Hachette, 2013) enjoyed bookstore success by bringing together two authors, chefs and friends: Yotam Ottolenghi, from the Jewish part of the city, and Sami Tamimi, from the Palestinian part. Today, Yotam Ottolenghi is the head of a swarm of seven restaurants in London, and he has become one of the most popular chefs in the world. The Hachette publishing house claims that 10 million copies of its works have been sold, 500,000 in France alone (in first place the bestseller Simplepublished in 2018).
From books to TV shows, the Anglo-Israeli demonstrated that vegetables could be self-sufficient and popularized ingredients that had hitherto been very rare in Western cupboards, such as zaatar (mixture of spices based on thyme) or tahini (sesame cream). His surname has even become an adjective for some fans who tell you how to prepare “Ottolenghi eggplant”.
With the return to grace of seasonality, one could believe that the craze for Israeli cuisine, greedy in sun-kissed ingredients, was going to deflate like a soufflé seized by the cold. It is not so. Today, Ottolenghi’s “children” are taking up the torch, like Julien Sebbag, for whom the work Jerusalem remains a major source of inspiration.
The young chef with a studied look, between a Christ figure and a rock dandy, has opened three new addresses in recent months. At Micho, rue de Richelieu, in Paris, he creates sandwiches with a high potential for salivation with seasonal vegetables (currently, artichokes and wild garlic pesto), between 13 and 16 euros each. Chez Forest, a brand located in Marseille (Joliette district) and in Paris (at the Museum of Modern Art, avenue du President-Wilson), he puts unloved dishes back on the menu (crumbled broccoli) and creates dishes gleaning widely around the Mediterranean.
You have to go back to the creation of Miznon, in 2013, a pioneering restaurant in Paris, to understand the Israeli fever. The street food chain first set up a stone’s throw from rue des Rosiers, a Mecca for Jewish cuisine in Paris, before also settling on the Saint-Martin canal and the Grands Boulevards. The menu does not in itself announce anything revolutionary: kebab, falafel… But the kebab overflows with lamb (12.50 euros) and the falafels fit into a pita stuffed with tomatoes, pickles and tahini (10 euros) . The star of the place is a cauliflower, blanched and roasted before being drizzled with olive oil (8 euros).
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