Cafeneto Raanana – kosher dairy and vegan friendly

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Cafeneto Raanana is a kosher, soon to be Mehadrin kosher, dairy restaurant that is vegan friendly. The restaurant, which is located on Achuza Boulevard, offers many healthy, vegan and gluten free dishes, as well as children meals.

We got to Cafeneto on an especially warm, cloudy and dry day and sat in the garden. The restaurant has indoors seating, a greenhouse area, and some space outdoors. We picked a seat on the corner deck that is surrounded by trees and bushes which isolates it from the busy Achuza traffic. There is also a playground “Gymboree” for families and children are welcome with crayons and a drawing kit.

The menu is a typical dairy coffee shop menu with many breakfast options, starters, salads, pastas, pizzas, toasts but it is also vegan friendly dishes. First, each plate is marked if it is vegan (red), if it is has a vegan option (yellow) or if it gluten free (blue), which means it does not contain gluten but it is not clean from gluten residues. Furthermore, there is a separate vegan menu with all the vegan plates. There are many of those, including vegan Seitan Shawarma, vegan pizzas, etc. Lastly, there is a full menu for children with children meals and small desserts like a chocolate shot and brownies. I was impressed!

Starters

We took two starters to share – patties and Bruschettas.

Eggplant and potato patties

The patties served with cucumber slices, Labneh-yogurt sauce and mint oil. These patties are vegan friendly (except the sauce) and gluten free. Nevertheless, they are great for non vegans like us too. They were very tasty and full of herbs and I liked the sauce very much as well!

Bruschettas

There are three toppings to the Bruschettas: seasoned tomatoes with Kalamata olives; green Tahini, roasted eggplant and hard boiled eggs and parsley; roasted pepper, goat cheese and walnuts. When ordering, there are two options – 3 or 6 Bruschettas, and we could pick the toppings, which we decided to take 2 from each type as we were sharing. The bruschettas were very good. If I had to pick one it would have been difficult, they were all excellent, crunchy crusty bread and yummy toppings!

Main courses

We took a pasta and lasagna to share.

Pasta Pesto

Pasta with basil pesto, garlic, walnuts and olive oil with zucchini, seared tomatoes and Kalamata olives.There are two options – pane and linguini. I picked the linguini. This is a very nice plate with a very fresh and sharp basil pesto and rich with the other ingredients. Very good!

Lasagna

Fresh pasta layers with eggplant and parmesan cheese in tomato sauce served with green salad on the side. We were given the option to pick between a green lettuce side salad and chopped vegetables salad and we picked the latter, which came with a homemade Tahini dressing. This Lasagna was awesome! Delicious!

Dessert and drinks

The dessert menu includes a variety of warm desserts such as Belgian Waffle, Chocolate soufflé, and a selection from the cake of the day from the display. There are also vegan desserts, and some are gluten free. We picked an apple pie.

Apple Pie

Pie filled with caramelized apples served with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. It was one of the typical good pastry cakes. It was served in room temperature and was very tasty.

There are plenty of drinks offered here from freshly squeezed orange and carrot juice to different milkshakes. We had the carrot juice and a glass of good Barkan Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 (they also carry Gewürztraminer).