Jan-Feb-2016_Final-1-4-16-attempt2

the Around the World issue

EMILY: My aunt Bill ... my aunt is named Bill (both laugh) ... she makes these amazing biscuits. She’d wake up at 5am to make them and she would put them out on the porch and everyone in the family would come get their own biscuits. She and Alon eventually traded biscuit recipes. For Alon, going home with me to Georgia and seeing the food we cooked in our house like red eye gravy and biscuits, chicken and dumplings and things like that ... that was a primer on Southern food. ALON: That’s one of my favorite things to do, to learn what people cook at home for their families. That’s how most people in the world eat. Not at restaurants. That’s a window into the true culture of food. COURTNEY: You’ve been back to Israel several times in your life. You say going in 2011 with chefs David Slater, Jacques Leonardi and John Besh was a turning point for you. ALON: That was huge for me from a food standpoint. Going back to Israel and seeing that food,eating in the restaurants and people’s homes, going to the markets ... it all just kind of sang to me. It felt real, it felt normal, it felt like who I was, and I realized that I was kind of hiding all that in my cooking. Then Emily and I stayed another couple of days after that trip ended, and we got engaged, which was really amazing. So of course, Israel holds a really special place for both of us, and it’s more than just how good the falafel is. Her family’s Jewish history, my family’s Jewish history, and being there together, and of course, getting engaged there ... Israel has been cemented into our lives forever. When I came back to New Orleans, I started testing Israeli recipes on Emily at home and then putting them on the menu at Domenica. We would make the cabbage salad with orange blossom vinaigrette and tahini with lamb Bolognese and crostini for parties at the house.We would do the roasted cauliflower in the Big Green Egg.We started doing a lot of hummus at the house, and we got a dog and named it Ceci (Che-chi), which means garbanzo bean in Italian. COURTNEY: So the menu for Shaya really started brewing at Domenica?

COURTNEY: What about the pita bread at Shaya? You take a piece of bread and rip it in half and hand the person sitting next to you a piece ... Were you hesitant to serve whole pita instead of sliced?

“That’s one of my favorite things to do, to learn what people cook at home for their families. That’s how most people in the world eat. Not at restaurants. That’s a window into the true culture of food.”

ALON: At a point where the Israeli influence started taking over the Domenica menu too much, we knew it was time to open Shaya so we had a real outlet for this food. But I never really sat down and thought about a menu for an Israeli restaurant until we had signed the lease on this building. Then I would go and sit at City Park on a park bench with all my notes that I compiled, pictures of our trips to Israel and notes on the food we would eat there and I would call my mom and say, “what was that thing you used to make again?” COURTNEY: What can you share about the foods in Israel and the things you can get that are traditional foods to that area that maybe make the food so special? ALON: It’s a melting pot of cultures. In 1948 when Israel became its own state you had millions of people immigrating there from Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Greece, Morocco, France, you name it. All of Europe and add Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Persian Gulf … all of these different places ... and they brought their culture and cuisine with them. Our menu reflects that. We’re not really inventing anything we’re paying homage to what makes these cuisines and foods so good.

ALON: There are a lot of cultures that eat that way around the world and it’s time to celebrate it here, get people to be comfortable with it. EMILY: I think it’s like an icebreaker for people at the table. If you aren’t comfortable sharing the pita you aren’t going to be comfortable sharing the dips. ALON: You should never eat with those people again if you aren’t comfortable sharing with them. COURTNEY: The hummus you do here, where you have something in the hummus, is different. Is that drawn from Israel or that is just you? ALON: In Israel they serve hummus with lots of different things.The more traditional would be warm garbanzo beans tossed with tahini, but they also do fava beans that are stewed down with hardboiled egg and for breakfast a lot of people will get their hummus plates with pickles and red onion and harissa and hardboiled egg. That’s our breakfast hummus, which we have on the menu here, too. COURTNEY: You went back to Israel with chefs John Currrence, Michael Solomonov, and Ashley Christenson for a culinary tour

[ABOVE] Warm Chocolate Babka with Poppy Seeds and Halvah Ice Cream — photo by Graham Blackall [RIGHT] Avocado Toast — photo by GrahamBlackall

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2016