Omer Shadmi and Daniel Zur never expected the developments of the last two years. Neither did the rest of us, but for the long-term best friends it wasn’t just a worldwide pandemic that rocked their world, but a stratospheric career rise they could never have dreamed of.
“It was like dreaming of becoming a professional football player and being told you can go and play for Manchester United” laughs Zur on a video call from Tel Aviv. About a year ago, he and Shadmi took charge as Head Chefs at one of Tel Aviv’s most elegant and prestigious hotels, The Norman, which is where they have dialled in from. “If you’d told us we’d be here in 18 months we’d have laughed” adds Shadmi.
Not that the pair were catapulted to fame as inexperienced chefs. Both had been cooking for years in Israel and abroad, with CV’s that include London restaurants The River Café and The Barbary and Tel Aviv's L28. Less than a month before the pandemic hit, they’d spent two weeks showcasing their food at London restaurant, Carousel. (Read about that here.) The venue — which last year moved from Marylebone to increasingly foodie Fitzrovia — allows in- the-know Londoners to get a feel for the flavours of foreign-based restaurants without clocking up air miles. “The chef after us had to leave after only half of his residency when London locked down” says Zur.
The February 2020 residency had been a huge success. Dishes like Cornish mackerel sumac with horseradish labneh pairing English ingredients with Israeli herbs and spices and just a touch of Shadmi’s Ashkenazi childhood menu wowed the crowds - including the JC's Fresser. The hope was to launch themselves from Carousel off the buzz they created and onto a new career path.
With restaurants closing their doors around the world, no amount of good publicity was going to get anything off the ground. “During the residency people had been asking us when we were going to open our own restaurant, but [once they got home] Carousel seemed irrelevant as everyone was just surviving.”
ALENA3 (1)
Cooking for the Alena restaurant at The Norman hotel has been a dream come true
Shadmi was cooking at Italian restaurant Magazino, which pivoted to providing take-out food for hungry, housebound Tel Avivians. “It was easy to go into delivery. We became one of the top restaurants on Wolt [Israel’s Deliveroo] sending out tonnes of food. Much more than we did as a regular restaurant” he says.
Zur had been employed by high end, dining venue, Toto, producing upmarket Italian meals. It wasn’t food that did well on delivery, so he and his colleagues had to down tools. His wife, Noa, who had been working as a pastry chef at The Norman’s Alena restaurant was also forced to sit it out at home. The pair switched into survival mode. “We started producing hand-made pasta and sauces which I delivered on my motor bike. It became huge” says Zur.
A few months in, Yaron Liberman, General Manager of The Norman hotel happened to be celebrating his birthday and having read about the Zurs’ food, asked them to cook for him. “He loved it and told us that things had changed at The Norman. Barak [Aharoni the previous head chef] was going to leave and was I interested? I told him yes, but it’s a package deal — Omer and I come together.” They were hired.
It was a big gig, and the pair felt the pressure of filling the shoes of previous incumbent, Barak Aharoni, who’d decided it was time to try new things after having launched the hotel’s catering several years earlier. “It was crazy to have that chance. We thought we’d open a humble place together and suddenly we were cooking for a Prime Minister and for all the richest people from all over the world. We didn’t want to be a joke, so we needed to deliver.”
In the month before opening to the public (and once open) the pair worked all hours, building up their menus while Noa, who had stayed on as pastry chef, was creating desserts.
Alena Pizza Small
Alena's pizza has very Israeli flavours
“We worked together using our chavruta, as we had done at Carousel, tocreate menus. But this was not a two week pop up this was for a hotel, a pool, a restaurant and a bar.” They had to provide food for hotel guests but also to show off their creativity in the hotel’s gourmet restaurant Alena.
Shadmi had talked of chavruta the last time we spoke, explaining it as “when two people study Torah together. Each brings his vision and the other listens and gives his view. That’s how Daniel and I work together in our cooking.” It is this partnership that helped them pull off their greatest challenge to date.
He says their ideas come from the heart, and their gut. “We deliver food that’s in our kishke (guts) — we wanted to bring what’s in our kishke [to the menu].” They’ve followed their instinct in the changes they’ve made to the menus at The Norman, keeping the main concept but changing dishes like the salads at breakfast and the burger on the lunch menu, for example.
Next month, the pair return to Carousel for a second residency — or perhaps a victory lap — from June 7 – 11. They told me they’ll be bringing a combination of cuisines: “Going abroad we wanted to bring our Israeli side and as we’re cooking here (in England) we wanted to reflect that too.” Also important to their food are the Galilean flavours they grew up with.
On the menu will be dishes like cured grey mullet with tabbouleh, yoghurt and lemon almonds; egg yolk ravioli filled with feta, aubergine, oregano, butter and lemon and pistachio basbousa — an Arab dessert popular in the Galil where they grew up. There are several meat dishes — including beef tartare with smoked aioli and crispy cabbage — with fish or vegetarian options available.
Despite the pressures of the last couple of years, their partnership, born of a childhood friendship, has continued to flourish. “It’s everything” says Shadmi, “We are the most stable things in each other’s lives — we just know we’ll always be there for each other.”
Catch Omer Shadmi and Daniel Zur at Carousel June 7 – 11.
Booking information at carousel-london.com
