Opera: Not just a restaurant, but an institution - review

It’s been five years since our last visit to Hadera’s famous Opera Restaurant, and everything is just as it was. Matriarch Savta Rachel Yaakobi, now 91, presides over the proceedings while other family members each have a role.

She tells us that she lost two sons to COVID-19 – but this incredible, indomitable woman still oversees everything that goes on in the restaurant she founded 50 years ago.

Her Yemenite parents arrived in Tel Aviv in 1911 and she was born there in 1933. The decision to bring traditional Yemenite food to Hadera was taken in 1974 when Opera was opened on the city’s main thoroughfare.

Fresh ethnic food in Hadera

The formula, then and now, is plentiful and very fresh ethnic food, with other eastern influences and some Ashkenazi tastes creeping in as well. The place is large with an outside patio, covered, as we arrived on a chilly January day.

Several salads were served together, with fresh pitot and a special Yemenite bread called lachouch made from the identical dough for English crumpet. When I mentioned to our wonderfully competent waiter Khaled – who has been there 18 years – that the British eat these toasted with butter and jam, he was suitably impressed, if slightly skeptical.

The salads – tehina, red pepper and tomato, creamed aubergine, z’hug and tomato salsa, were very fresh – and great when mopped up with the lachouch. (NIS 24/30 for salads). We decided to try and understand why the Yemenites love hilbe, a rather slimy product of the fenugreek plant, said to be very healthy. It was very lemony and smooth, with a  distinctive musky flavor. It’s basically the texture which is so off-putting, but one could get used to it.

Two plates of the famous Yemenite soup appeared next. Very hot (always a good thing in my opinion) they were full of cooked meat and boiled potato and the consommé was dark and meaty. This is definitely a must when visiting Opera. It’s a soup that is a meal in itself. (NIS 50).

For the main course, I chose a skewer of pargit which was served with fried onion and tomato slices. (NIS 38). My companion, meanwhile, performed surgery on a trio of lamb chops, savoring every mouthful. (NIS 160). Several side dishes arrived, a pickled cabbage dish, some Israel-style cubed tomatoes and cucumbers, and a plate of rice with haricot beans and small roast potatoes. We were only able to pick at these as we had consumed so much food already. There was also a plate of French fries which were impressively non-oily.

Khaled, our super-efficient waiter, who comes from Baka-al-gharbiya, brought us hot drinks – a bots (black ground coffee) for my companion and a mint tea for me. We thought we had got away with not having dessert, but suddenly a plate of pastries appeared from the bakery next door, also owned by the family. They went so well with the hot drinks, they were impossible to resist. We looked around at fellow diners and saw that everyone was enjoying the food and the atmosphere.

Opera is not so much a restaurant as an institution, and the standard of the food served is consistently high. It took 25 minutes to get back to our Netanya home and we both agreed it was well worth the journey.

• Opera Restaurant
• HaNassi St. 61, Hadera
• (04) 632-2352
• Open: Sun.-Thurs. 8 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri., 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Shabbat closed
• Wheelchair accessible
• Kashrut: Hadera Rabbinate
• The writer was a guest of the restaurant.