Slow and Bro: Revisiting an Israeli home-smoked meat restaurant - review

It’s been a few years since we visited Slow and Bro in Ra’anana, so we were happy to receive an invitation to re-review this charming meat restaurant, which has built up a reputation over the years for home-smoked meats in very aesthetic surroundings.

The restaurant is large, and the tables and chairs well spread out and comfortable. The decor is still a subdued gray and black color scheme with an unchanged decorative wall displaying old cooking artifacts, like obsolete meat grinders and ancient coffee percolators.

Eating smoked meat at Slow and Bro

For starters I chose the bruschetta of goose in a honey-lemon sauce, and my companion the vegetable soup with meat. We waited quite a long time for our dishes to appear, and sipped our drinks (draft beer for him and a fairly conventional red wine for me).

When they did arrive, the goose slices on toasted bread were tender, fat-free, and I loved the contrast between the gamey flavor of the meat and the garnish of sweet pear slices and very sweet sauce, plus a generous amount of pine nuts as garnish (NIS 56).

The soup was full of vegetables and had a large piece of brisket floating around in it. But it was only lukewarm and should have been piping hot on a cold winter’s evening. How difficult is that for the kitchen staff to achieve?

For the main course I chose pargit, which came with coleslaw, red onions, and pickles. It was not a very exciting dish, but the meat was tender, and there was a lot of it (NIS 75).

My companion chose goose breast, more of the pink, faintly smoked meat with a side of carrots in Alabama sauce (mayonnaise with added spices). As goose meat is something of a rarity in our eating repertoire, he really enjoyed it and left not a trace of his meal on the plate (NIS 130).

The restaurant also now serves desserts, derived from some central dessert-making emporium, and offers a wide selection, including my favorite, crème brûlée, a dish that I avoid in meat restaurants for obvious reasons.

We ended our meal with a shared chocolate nougat log, a crusty chocolate base and a topping of very rich chocolate cream, every spoonful of which felt sinful.

Finally, I asked Igor, the multilingual proprietor who came from Russia not so many years ago, how he arrived at the name of his restaurant.

“‘Slow’ is for the slow smoking process we use to prepare our meats, and ‘Bro’ – well, we are all brothers.”

• Slow and Bro
• 5 Hata’asiya Street
• Ra’anana
• Tel: (09) 765-9999
• Open: Sun.-Thurs., 12 noon – 10:30 p.m.; Friday – delivery only
• Kashrut: Ra’anana Rabbinate
• Wheelchair accessible
• The writer was a guest of the restaurant.