Cà Phê Hanoi is a Vietnamese fusion
restaurant that stimulates the senses. Its décor is of a Vietnamese market with
colorful ambience. The food is an art creation in a fusion of Vietnamese,
French and Israeli cuisines. Eating at Cà Phê Hanoi is a sensual experience it
is a real night out!
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| Cà Phê Hanoi |
Cà Phê Hanoi, located on the
corner of Malchei Israel blvd and Frishman Street is easily identified by the shiny
huge signboard and huge red door. As we walked in, we found ourselves in a busy
Far East street market. The décor is quite lively with a lot of red color,
artifacts from the Far East, bamboo shelves packed with rows of Asian produces
like soy sauce, rice vinegar bottles, bags of tempura powder bags with Thai
labels, etc. In between – paper lamp houses and decorations which made the
restaurant very vibrant. The kitchen is open, but it wasn’t felt at all, even
though we were close to it. With the rather loud music, this felt like a little
of a carnival, fun place to hang out at and have a cocktail.
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| Cà Phê Hanoi - Extravagant door |
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| Cà Phê Hanoi |
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| Asian Prduces |
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| Exotic artifacts |
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| Far East decor |
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| Vietnamese artifacts |
Nofar Zoher is the restaurant’s
chef and while the menu is rather small, it is quite innovative and brings together
exotic flavors and combinations. Each of the dishes is designed like a piece of
art and is decorated with herbs and edible flowers (like nasturtium).
We started with cocktails. They
make cold press fruit juices here, which preserves the taste and vitamins of
the fruits. There are a number of fruit blends that I would have loved to have!
I picked one containing Mango, Pineapple and Coconut, I loved it! The juices
are also used in the fantastic cocktails served here. We had two cocktails:
Lychee Mojito - White Rum,
Lychee, Fresh Lime, Mint - beautifully served in a pineapple-shaped glass with
garnish and a skewer of lychees and so good! Not sour at all and very balanced
with the alcohol!
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| Cà Phê Hanoi – cocktails |
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| cocktails |
A Perfect Pear - Vodka,
Elderflower Liqueur, Pear, Vanilla. Served with an extremely thin slice of
pear. My partner enjoyed it very much.
Starters and Appetizers
English Peas
– boiled, served whole with soy sauce.
Crunchy and tasty snack that we started with while having our pre-dinner
cocktails.
Crispy
Spring Rolls - Rice Paper
Filled with Steamed Cabbage, Noodles, Carrot, Red onion & Tofu. Served with
Fresh Crisp Lettuce, Mint, Cilantro and a Chili Lime Sauce. The waiter
explained us that the right way of eating it is to wrap the roll in lettuce and
dip in the sauce. The rolls were a surprise - crunchy and tasty with very good stuffing.
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| Crispy spring roll |
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| Crispy spring roll |
Gyoza – hand made gyoza stuffed with pumpkin (and other
ingredients that I missed), served with soy sauce. The gyoza is ordered by
pieces. We order two, which was a mistake, because I couldn’t stop eating them.
For a moment, I thought I could have a whole meal just of those heavenly
gyozas.
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| Gyoza |
Main Courses
Golden Curry – fish, eggplant and black quinoa. A really good dish,
packed with flavors! Seared fish squares and rounds of fried eggplant covered
with the white curry, which almost melted in my mouth because it was so tender
and the contrast of the quinoa created a really nice game of textures.
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| Cà Phê Hanoi - Golden Curry |
Chicken Pepper – grilled boneless chicken thigh with smoked chili,
Vietnamese cashew, Cambodian capsicum, and Sichuan caramel, served with Jasmine
rice. My partner had this dish, which I only tasted. It was delicious!
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| chicken pepper |
Desserts
Desserts here are parve
since the restaurant is kosher. While we tend to order mostly fruit based
desserts in this case, we ended up trying many more desserts because we got a
treat from the host - two extra desserts.
Parisian Banana Loti – crisp puff dough, almond milk cream, coconut caramel
and run-caramelized bananas. This was by far my favorite desserts. I wouldn’t
have guessed it was parve! Balanced sweetness and flavorsome!
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| Parisian Banana Loti |
Chocolate Cremo – chocolate and praline brulé, sweet-salty chocolate
crumble, and Indian seasoned Halva. That’s the second dessert we ordered. A rich chocolate cream with gentle saltiness.
I could feel the coconut milk in it (not my cup of tea) but my partner loved
it!
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| Cremo |
Cookie-lida (a special) –
white salty-vanilla cookies with mango-passion fruit semifreddo. This was a
somewhat different version of the cookie ice-cream sandwich that they usually
serve here. The cookies were rather salty which strengthen their vanilla flavor
and they suited quite interestingly with the fruity semifreddo. I found it to
be a very stimulating to the senses.
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| Cookie-lida |
Coconut Yoghurt Ice cream – a
vegan dessert. If you like frozen yoghurt, you’ll love it! It has a moderate
sourness and sweetness and it is very refreshing!
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| Coconut yoghurt ice cream |
We also had an espresso; they serve here all the standard hot drinks.
Before going home, I recommend going to the restrooms, even if you don’t
have to. The restaurant was established on the remains of a bank, and the
designer of the restaurant,
Ségolène Getti,
who previously worked with Phillip Stark, kept much of the safe area of the
bank the same. The toilets are located in the basement and the heavy steel
doors, metal bars, and safe door are intact, which makes it like going to a living museum.
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| Cà Phê Hanoi - toilets |
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| Cà Phê Hanoi - remains of the safe room |
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| Cà Phê Hanoi - remains of the bank safe room in the toilet area |
Cà Phê Hanoi is one of forty
worldwide restaurants of Claude Louzon and Emmanuel Dayan, which explains the international
standards and ambience here.
In summary, Cà Phê Hanoi is more than a restaurant with good food,
it is a place to have fun and enjoy an entertaining night out.
Information
Disclosure: I was a guest of the restaurant
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