The Dining Corner: Pinat Ochel, Rosh Pina

This week I took one of my periodical trips up north, and stopped for a while in the quiet village of Rosh Pina. It looks sleepy but for the new commercial center just off Route 90, at the entrance to the town. There are the usual historical sites, of course; beautiful views and attractive eateries everywhere, as well as wonderful rural B&Bs. On the whole it looks like a one-day stopover for tourists, conveniently set at a Western Galilee crossroads for access to the host of attractions the region offers. But look around carefully – pick up some brochures – there’s a world of art and artisanal manufacture going on in Rosh Pina. This site shows some – each category has descriptions and photos of northern small businesses.

The Old Town has an atmosphere mixed of history and artist’s colony.  I like the mysterious stone houses that peer at the street from their screens of  trees and flowers.

Big bass chimes in front of the wind-chime store sound a curiously solemn, reverberating note as the breeze moves them. It makes me feel a little lonely.

But I recover my good humor viewing a nearby house whimsically covered in clocks of all sizes.  I take my time on the cobblestone streets and wind up sitting in Baron Rothchild’s hilltop garden to breathe the cool air and let my mind empty out.

Eventually my stomach starts feeling empty, too, so I make my way downhill to Pinat Ochel.  It’s a small restaurant set in a house built by the Ottomans, who ruled in Israel from 1516 to 1917 (with a few interruptions from Napoleon and Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt). The British conquered Ottoman rule here in 1917 and used the solid stone structure as the regional Customs House.

You walk in and see bunches of thyme hung up on the walls to dry,

and local honey for sale.

Here’s Adir, the owner.

He told me that the building has housed a restaurant since 1967. Looking for a new business enterprise about six years ago, he took over ownership of Pinat Ochel and made it kosher.

“The menu is what has evolved in Israeli home cooking,” Adir said. “Some of the dishes I brought from my Tunisian family’s traditional cuisine, and some are just popular Israeli foods. We get a lot of tourists buying take-away for meals at their B&Bs. On Fridays we turn the whole place into a buffet.”

There are more sophisticated restaurants in town, but I like the simple, generous, home-style cooking at Pinat Ochel. The food is always fresh and tasty; the atmosphere is old-fashioned and busy; and everything is very clean. Prices are popular, too, and that’s because all the ingredients are locally grown or raised.

When I was visited, there was chicken in sauce, grilled breast of chicken, peppers stuffed with rice and ground meat, liver in sauce, farfel, potatoes, zucchini.

Other times the menu has varied some; I guess it depends on what’s available that day. There’s a good salad bar featuring the colorful, flavor-packed greens so beloved to the Mediterranean palate.  Salads of lentils, cabbages, carrots, eggplants, beets, tabouli, techinah, choummous…

So I filled a plate with salads first.

I chose stuffed peppers afterwards,

and then had room only for an espresso.

I particularly liked the lentil salad.

Adir gave me a real down-home style recipe for it: cook the lentils, blend herbs and spices with olive oil and lemon juice, and pour the dressing over the lentils. Add some fried onions. Hm. Looks like I’ll have to make this at home today. I’ll post the results.

Lunch over, I stepped outside and stopped to admire an old eucalyptus tree planted around with flowers and the herbs people here love to steep in their tea: mint and rue.

I’ll be visiting again.