Fresh Start
Avocado and artichoke toast with poached egg
Place: Casa Lavi, Jerusalem
When: Thursday, late morning
Environment: The café is located in a residential neighborhood and is patronized by an overwhelmingly English-speaking crowd. The café staff are mainly English speakers as well. There is a little patio out front, with about 10 small tables, and one larger wooden table where people often sit on their own with laptops, or conduct meetings. The patio is pretty much entirely covered by umbrellas and awnings, providing shade. There is no indoor space to speak of. Just three very small tables. And it always seems to be crowded, both inside and out. Ordering is done inside at a counter (come with patience, because no one at this place is in a rush); coffee is delivered by name, though a window. The food is provided inside through a window, once the beeper they gave you upon ordering has summoned you. Easy-listening music plays over the speakers. The café itself has a fresh, almost Nordic aesthetic, with white and light wood being the theme. The outdoors is a bit more hodgepodge, however, with mosaic tiles over the outdoor sink and a bamboo fence with foliage bordering one side of the patio.
My Order: Cappuccino (NIS 16); Avocado and artichoke toast with added poached egg (NIS 61).
The low-down: The coffee came in a rough ceramic cup, rather than the standard glass or mug. That’s the first indication that this place takes pride in its coffee production. The coffee always comes with two shots of espresso, because they know you want to taste the brew and not just the milk. And yet, somehow, the coffee remained mild. I wouldn’t have minded a bolder, more robust flavor. Meanwhile, the toast didn’t actually seem toasted; rather, it was a large, square slice of bread. The toppings were decadent, though. On the bottom was pesto, topped with avocado mash, topped with slices of artichoke heart, with a poached egg on top. The entire thing was sprinkled with pinenuts, micro greens, pickled onion and scallion. So flavor abounded, including a tangy, citrus kick. And the egg was nicely poached, with the yolk running down everything once I sliced it open.
Who else was there: A group of three people sat crowded around a small table in the sun. Two of the men had shaggy hair and beards and large knitted kippot. One wore a wrinkled white button-down shirt and khakis, with some gray peppering his beard and a pair of round-frame glasses, and the other wore a blue t-shirt, jeans, and the omnipresent (in Israel) Blundstones. Both sat with laptops open in front of them. The third participant was a woman in a gray fleece and gray jeans. She had curly, shoulder-length hair pulled back in a half-ponytail.
The men were involved in an energetic discussion, and the woman was nodding along – an outsider to the conversation, but not an outsider to the man she sat beside. The couple was older than the man in the t-shirt across from them. He was pitching the two of them a solution for getting their teenage son back from the cult-like group he had joined. He left home a few months prior, and joined an extremist hilltop collection, wreaking havoc on nearby Arab villages at night, and herding sheep during the day. This young man was familiar with the group, and he had intervened in the past for other concerned parents. He was proposing a plan for them, for a fee. They didn’t know what to think, other than they wanted their son home and safe.
