(written for eLuna Website)

Restaurant review:

La Guta, 18 Rivlin St., Nahlat Shiva, Jerusalem. Tel. 02-623-2322. Fine French-Oriental cuisine.

There are some restaurants where I feel it's best not to chew over the menu, and instead surrender myself to the waiter's whim. After all, the person who delivers this stuff to the tables knows what's a hit. 
    So I asked my waitress, Adi, "What is the specialty of the house?"
    She couldn't say. Everything at La Guta is superlative.
    Alright, then, I told her: surprise me.
    While breaking bread with the homemade dinner rolls, Judy and I warmed up with a tiny tiff. She knew what she wanted to order, she said, slathering the fluffy bread with sun-dried tomato spread. But it's more fun this way, anticipating what might arrive, I responded.
    The argument never reached full throttle, because swiftly, along came Adi's first offerings. The menu called it simply "green salad," but I counted at least six colors in it (and numerous shades of green itself), drizzled with a genteel mustard dressing (NIS 30). Another large plate, demurely understated as "antipasti" on the menu (NIS 30), was even prettier: marinated red pepper, zucchini, sweet potato, and a bouquet of smoked salmon upon artichoke.
    After such a splendid first course, with my hunger pangs somewhat assuaged, I'm perfectly happy to wait a while for the next course. But although the restaurant was full, Adi never let us feel unattended. Between courses, she even came by with a tiny gold crumb plow to refresh the tablecloth. Nice touch.
    La Guta trains the staff very well, I noted. The waiters glide about unobtrusively, and they all seem very happy to be working there. That's important.
    Judy and I were ready for the main course, but we were made to wait. However, we weren't about to holler, because what gave us pause was another selection of first courses.
     In the heat of summer, soup does not appeal to me. Good thing I didn't offer Adi my opinion, because what she brought was a creative wonder: a cool, velvety melon soup flavored with ginger and honey, a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle, and iced melon balls (NIS 30).
    The second plate of our second first course just happened to be one of my favorite foods in the entire world: goose liver. Oh, heavens, was this incredible! The menu calls it "tart of foie gras in onion jam" (NIS 70), but I call it indescribable.
    I really hated to have to share it with my date -- not just because I am instinctively gluttonous with such a treat, but because of what the liver did to her. I have rarely witnessed such pure pleasure in a woman, and it made me jealous. After a series of embarrassing oohs and aahs, she doused my eventual ambitions by saying, and I quote, "That's enough for me -- you're off the hook tonight."
    This would be an appropriate moment to get off the subject of satiety, gastronomic and otherwise, and describe the restaurant.
    The gentle play of shadows on the arched, Arabic-style house is consistent with La Guta's elegance. The atmosphere is low-intensity, high-class. The subdued lighting, brass fittings, glass-and-wood furnishings, and the individual cloth towels in the bathrooms, elevate the restaurant to a higher level.
    Consistent with that is the caliber of the food, and the price of a meal. This is not a hangout for riffraff.
    Lemon sorbet cleared our palates, though frankly, following goose liver, I'd rather leave my taste buds just as they are.
    I took the opportunity to stretch my legs, and perhaps get an answer to my earlier query: the one or two dishes that this restaurant is most proud of.
    What, I asked the manager, is the specialty of the house?
    He couldn't say. I prodded. Well, he said, our beef Wellington is very popular, and the soups, and the goose liver. But the menu changes daily and seasonally, he explained, based on what fresh ingredients are available.
    The restaurant's self-expression, Judy noticed, is further apparent in the tableware. The plates, cutlery and glasses are elegant but simple and unornamented. The food itself is the decoration.
    When the next course arrived, Judy's eyes lit up. "That," she exclaimed, admiring the plate of salmon fillet, "is what I would have chosen!"
    I avenged the disaster of having to share the goose liver by insisted on my right to half the salmon (NIS 80). Its red pepper creme was rich with a slightly spicy buzz, and the salmon was just about the juiciest I've ever tasted. Talk about cooked to perfection: someone here has figured out the secret of making salmon luscious.
    The tournedos Rossini (NIS 100), a regal filet bathed in a sauce of beef stock and red wine, is irresistable to the discriminating beef lover, and here, too, there was a nice, creative surprise: the accompaniment, in the same sauce, of a cooked pear and fig.
    We sipped iced blueberry juice with vodka while the tablecloth was plowed again, and forthwith, more cutlery was summoned. Adi set down an irresistable "chocolate volcano," a name that became clear when we sliced into it, and the hot chocolate cream in the middle of the cake let forth a burst of steam.
    A pretty flotilla of peppermint leaves made even our cups of tea above average.
    It was behind the swinging door where I finally discovered the answer to my question: the specialty of the house is "La Guta" herself.
    Guta Ben-Simhon, a lovely, lively kitchen magician, has been conjuring up fine French-Oriental food at her restaurant for 11 years. Her culinary expertise began as a young girl in Morocco, and has become a generational tradition in the family. She learned the art from her elders, and passed it on to her children. With one presently learning gastronomy in Switzerland, she has two sons, Yossi and Guy, managing the restaurant, while her husband performs the vital task of searching the markets for ingredients worthy of her pots.
    As grand as my meal was, next time I go to La Guta, I think I'd like to spend the evening in the kitchen, chatting with the Mama while sampling a bit of everything she creates.