Newshi: The standout restaurant of Modi'in's new leisure sector - review

Dam Hamaccabim Boulevard is the city’s latest effort to create a leisure and entertainment area in the center of Modi’in. Restaurants and shops line the boulevard, each with outdoor seating. This makes this street with the grisly name – Maccabi blood – seem like a sort of block party.

Dam Hamaccabim is actually a type of flower – red of course. Neither the flower nor the Maccabees have anything to do with the restaurants and shops on the boulevard. Despite the name, the street is bustling with diners and shoppers throughout the day, in a rather festive atmosphere.

Newshi Asian and Sushi Restaurant is the stand-out Asian restaurant on the boulevard. My granddaughter and I chose Newshi for our ladies’ lunch, a tradition that we have nurtured over the years. This break from both our hectic lives gives us an opportunity to touch base and gives me a chance to appreciate the lovely young woman that she has become.

What's there to eat at Newshi?

The decor at Newshi is minimalist, the furniture is basic and light, and very appropriate for the foods served. There are plenty of tables inside and more seating outdoors. The atmosphere is relaxed and we enjoyed a long lazy lunch without being rushed out the door.

The Newshi menu offers a good variety of Asian-style foods. Meat is woven into many of the dishes, and there are also fish and vegetarian options. We started with a shared order of fish and chips (NIS 54). The tempura-coated fish was salmon and not white fish as I expected.

Had I read the menu more carefully I would not have been as surprised. The fish is served with Hollandi Chips also called “Amsterdam chips.” These are made from specific potatoes and are fried several times to get the crispy consistency. You’ll notice the quality of both the fish and the chips right away. Warning: you can’t eat just one.

Newshi has a good selection of sushi, so sushi it will be. My granddaughter doesn’t like raw fish, so to avoid it altogether, we limited ourselves to dishes marked vegetarian. We settled on the Rainbow sushi named as such because the cover of every piece is a different color (NIS 52).

Having come to expect sushi rolls to be served with just a smear of wasabi, I asked for extra wasabi and got enough for us and for the next table. The sushi itself was tasty and the bitesize pieces were the perfect pop-in-your-mouth size.

My granddaughter zeroed in on the Crazy Wok, the signature dish of this restaurant (NIS 64). This is a noodle-based dish with vegetables in Teriyaki sauce. The twist is that the noodles are made of beets, and are thus red in color.

A bowl of red noodles is somewhat jarring, but at her insistence, I tried the dish and was pleasantly surprised. Along with the red noodles, were chunks of salmon, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and cashew nuts. The dish was so generous that I took what remained home to Saba (Grandpa) who does not join us on ladies’ days, but was waiting impatiently for his shirayim (leftovers).

Every meal with my grandchildren ends with a dessert. There is no point in even asking. We chose the hot fudge cake with a scoop of (definitely parve) ice cream. The dark chocolate cake was so rich that one spoon for each of us was all the sugar that we could handle.

There appear to be some very nice restaurants on Dam Hamaccabim Boulevard so I look forward to many good meals in the good company of my grandchildren.

Our bill for this delicious and satisfying meal came in at just over NIS 200 including the tip.

The writer was not a guest of the restaurant and is the founder and CEO of eLuna.com the premier English-language website for kosher restaurants in Israel.

Newshi Restaurant55 Dam Hamaccabim Boulevard, ModiinTel: (08) 699-9477Kashrut: Rabbanut Modi’in. Glatt Meat Badatz VeggiesHours: Sunday-Thursday, 11:00 a.m.-11:30 p.m.; after Shabbat-11:30 p.m. Closed: Friday and Shabbat.