Bleecker Bakery: Out for breakfast in Netanya - review

When we made aliyah in 1973, one of the things we most missed from our previous life in England was not having a Sunday.

Sunday in the UK was such a lovely day, spent reading the quality papers and having a great lunch as well as being able to do a bit of work in the garden and watch television, in contrast with the denials of Shabbat.

We quickly discovered that Friday morning made a perfectly adequate substitute for doing all of the above as, even then, it was a time off work for many.

Now, with no garden to worry about and plenty of time to read over Shabbat, we like to go out for breakfast on Friday – as do a great many of our compatriots.

So, on the last Friday of Passover we arrived quite early at one of our favorite breakfast places, Bleecker Bakery in the Ir Yamim shopping mall. It’s a great place to sit and watch the comings and goings of our fellow Israelis, spending their Friday morning on shopping sprees.

The Passover menu at Bleecker Bakery

The Passover menu was just like the all-year-round one with the exception of added matzo. I managed to get through the whole of Passover without eating any, except for the obligatory olive-sized amount on Seder night – because to me matzo tastes like corrugated cardboard possibly does and has dire effects on the digestive system.

At home, if I got hungry and felt like a snack, I would bake a potato in the microwave and eat that with cottage cheese – anything rather than eat the bread of affliction.

The Bleeker breakfast came with a “loaf” so like the real thing it was hard to believe it wasn’t bread.

We always share one breakfast, a meal we find to more than enough for two. We had an omelet and a plate of salads and dips. These included three different kinds of flavored cream cheese, labane, tomato salsa, and a fairly standard salad, topped with grated carrot and finished with an acceptable vinaigrette dressing.

The platter also contains a pat of butter and some excellent homemade apple jam and this, served on a slice of the “bread” provided the just right sweet conclusion to our breakfast.

The jewel in the crown of this meal was the very good cappuccino we were served. Hot and strong, just the way we like our coffee, it made the whole experience memorable. The price for this meal is NIS 88. Together with a quite generous tip, we spent all of NIS 100 NIS. It was worth every grush.

• Bleecker Bakery
• Ir Yamim Mall
• (09) 772-6999
• Hours: Sun.-Thu., 8.30 a.m.- 11 p.m.; Fri.: 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; 
• Sat., 8 p.m.– midnight. Closed on Shabbat.

Kashrut: Netanya Rabbinate.