Otoro: The best (kosher) Japanese food in Israel? - review

To be honest, I stacked the deck against Otoro. When I called about writing a restaurant review, I told owner Otoro Dylan Sliwinski that I had just come back from Japan (a fact I seem to work into every conversation I have) where I ate some amazing sushi. I said I would be in Tel Aviv for a meeting on a Sunday, when it’s usually not possible to get fresh fish.

“No problem,” he answered. “We have a private fish supplier on Sundays.”

So I found myself at Otoro, a small restaurant in Ramat Gan named for the fattiest and most flavorful part of bluefin tuna. Diners sit at the 18 seats around the counter and eat freshly made handrolls as soon as the chef makes them. That way the nori seaweed stays crispy. The rolls are small – three or four bites each – so you need several to make a meal.

The best (kosher) Japanese food in Israel

This is the best Japanese food I have had in Israel although I have not tried the non-kosher Japanese restaurants here. The fish and the other products were all top-of-the-line, and the combination was delicious. Sliwinski specially imports his rice and nori from China, and all sauces are made in-house. The fish was very high-quality, perhaps the best I’ve had in Israel.

We started with a salmon tartare (NIS 64), consisting of a large portion of fresh chopped salmon on top of rice with a slightly spicy mayonnaise. It was an excellent start.

We then tried the salad (NIS 68), which had chopped fresh salmon, tuna, and yellowtail on top of a heap of cucumber “noodles.” It was served with small nori seaweed rectangles, and you assemble your own mini hand-roll. This would be an excellent dish for anyone trying to cut back on carbohydrates and we enjoyed every bite.

Then there was crispy rice (NIS 68) – squares of rice that have been fried, topped with fish and other toppings. I need a thesaurus to find synonyms for “excellent” and “delicious.”

We moved on to the actual hand-rolls – I had the salmon (NIS 36) while my husband had the “crab” (NIS 33) which Sliwinski warned us was a little spicy. The nori was crispy, and the textures went together beautifully.

For dessert there was mochi. We left feeling full but not stuffed and happy that we had found Otoro. Sliwinski says that at night he closes the curtains and puts candles on the sushi bar to make the atmosphere more romantic.

Sliwinski also has a great personal story. He dropped out of school at 15 and began cooking in Israeli restaurants. At 18, he went to cooking school in Paris where he was hired by celebrity chef Assaf Granit to work in his restaurant Shabour, which won a Michelin star.

He came back to Israel, volunteered for the army where he served as a combat soldier, and gradually became more religious. He decided he didn’t want to work in non-kosher restaurants anymore but wanted the high standards he had grown accustomed to at Shabour.

He also married his French Jewish sous chef, and they have two young boys, aged five months, and a year and a half. I joked that he comes to the restaurant to get a little rest.

He plans to open several other branches of Otoro in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which will be run as franchises.

• Otoro
• 1 Hachilazon St., Ramat Gan
• Hours: Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.
• Monday-Thursday, noon to 4 p.m.; 6-11 p.m.
• Phone: 053-847-0033
• Kashrut: Rabbanut Ramat Gan

The writer was a guest of the restaurant.