The new Japanese that wants to give exactly what is not here

In a reality like ours over the past year, maybe it's worth letting someone from the outside try, perhaps. For example, Alexander Sakhnovskiy.

The young Russian entrepreneur moved from Moscow to Tel Aviv with a resume of 25 restaurants around the world, but his global lifestyle did not neutralize the feeling of inner outsiderness. "When I first arrived in Israel, I felt like someone different," he described, "not from here and not typical here."

In Japanese these feelings come together in the name Gaijin. Here they gathered at the restaurant.

The new Japanese, on Lilinblum Street in Tel Aviv defines itself as a modern Izakaya. That is, less rough and more designed, with the same food and drink characteristics that have made places like it around the world a must-go-to when you get there.

The chef and culinary consultant Gome Galili joined Sakhnovskiy, and together with him came Gil-Ad Dabush, who previously worked in Japan itself and served as the head chef in the Israeli branch of the Dinings restaurant.

Together, we will build a Japanese menu that dances between tradition and creative liberation. Fish and seafood, of course, in the top notch (katsu-format seafood bar with pumpkin and cabbage salad, oyster with daikon and chili and a requested option to add some caviar to it as well, seared machi with pickled pear and tiger shrimp tempura with tubjan butter), A respectable sushi section, which focuses on sashimi, nigiri and hand-rolls, as well as meat and chicken displays in the form of a Denver cut with pickled wagyu fat, "wing gyoza", or a chicken neck skewer with endive and blue cheese.

A modern Izakaya. Gaijin

The menu will also offer a lettuce and leaf salad with a skewer of broccoli, for example, grilled salmon with maple koji and a combination of blue crabs and scallops with caramel katsuobushi and tomato powder, and will end with three desserts - Basque cheesecake, of course, with matcha, panna cotta with yuzu granita And buckwheat chocolate tart with crème anglaise with a hojicha base, which is a type of green tea.

These will be consistently adapted to the variety of sake, Japanese whiskey and oriental distillates, and the special cocktails that will make extensive use of their passports, back and forth, and God forbid - from "strawberry milk punch" with gin and rhubarb liqueur to cucumber gimlet. From "Gaijin Spritz" with Mint Vermouth and Italicus Liqueur to "Young Rice" with Pandan Vodka and Midori.

Sakhnovskiy tells how he walked 25-30 km a day in the first right here, "to get to know the city, the neighborhoods, the restaurants and the people." This familiarity paid off, and he quickly realized how challenging it would be to open a business here. "They told me that after you establish A successful restaurant in Israel, you can do it anywhere in the world," he admitted, "So I fell in love with the weather, the people and the food, and I took the opportunity to do exactly what I couldn't find here."

Still a Gaijin, as far as he was concerned. Still an outsider. But from now on completely ours.

Gaijin, 29 Lilienblum, Tel Aviv, 052-3119298