The Palomar will treat you not only to great food from the Mediterranean fringes but a percussion solo, too. We expect so much of restaurants. In return for our filthy cash we expect them to send us back out the door feeling a little better than when we went in. Sadly the best we can hope for from the vast majority is that they put the world on pause for an hour or two. Some contrive to suck us dry: they pound us with concepts and throbbing music of a kind designed by the US military for psychological warfare experiments, and with a straining rictus grin of enthusiasm and jollity.
Usually these places are staffed by young people; bloody young people, with their optimism and their rising hormones and their unsullied dreams. So I devised a cunning plan. I would test this nightspot by daylight. Which is what I did.
And you know what? I was wrong. I even forgave some of the young cooks for wearing hats at a jaunty angle and for having nicknames like Mits the Bookie. I forgave them all this because the Palomar — the London outpost of a five-strong, achingly hip restaurant group in Jerusalem — serves lovely food.
It pulls on the traditions of the Mediterranean fringes without being overwhelmed by them, and it does so with a vigour and enthusiasm which are so utterly infectious that even this professional misanthrope had to get with the project. We start with a loaf of kubaneh, an air-filled, buttery bread from the Yemen baked in a pot, a little like brioche.
It comes with a silky dip of tahini and another called velvet tomatoes, which is the fruit of the vine blitzed and emulsified to something fruity and so rich you could dribble it on almost anything, sweet or savoury. When we order it Amedi rewards us by fetching a bottle of arak, the anise-flavoured fire water from the eastern end of the Med and pours shots for us into egg cups.
