I was excited to try Bar Bolonat since it is from the same people of Taim (one of my all time favorite places) and Balaboosta (another solid Middle Eastern restaurant). The menu here also has an Israeli and Middle Eastern focus and luckily for Lav, they also had many veggie friendly options.
Everything sounded great but with the help of our very friendly waitress, we narrowed down our selections to start with the fried olives ($8), grilled baby artichokes ($12), and everyday cauliflower ($12) while I opted for the shrimp curry ($16) for my main entree and Lav got the hand cut pasta ($23). I'm not a huge fan of olives and even though these were fried, I still didn't really love them but Lav thought they were quite good. Next came the grilled baby artichokes, which came highly recommended by our waitress. It was served with pistachio yogurt and then lightly sprinkled with a variety of herbs and spices. I have a somewhat love/hate relationship with artichokes but I quite enjoyed this dish. I basically like anything covered in yogurt and this was a nice way to marry the two ingredients together. Next, I tried the cauliflower which was lightly fried and served with peanut tahini sauce. I appreciated that the cauliflower was very lightly fried - just enough to give it some crunch on the outside and the tahini sauce gave it a different twist to how cauliflower is normally served. Lav didn't think either of these dishes had enough salt to it, which she may be right, but after having had several recent meals that were way too heavy on salt, I kind of appreciated some dishes that were lighter in taste.
When I ordered the curry, I was a bit worried that it was going to be a heavy curry that you get in Indian or Thai, but luckily the one here is a much lighter version. This one was made with coconut milk, a Middle Eastern hot sauce, 5 very thick and plumb pieces of shrimp and then topped with a few circular pieces of fried bread. I thought I was going to miss not having rice or something else to go with the dish, but I really liked just soaking the shrimp in the curry sauce and taking bites like that. I could have (and should have) stopped eating there but I also took bites from Lav's pasta dish. The pasta was served with garlic, chilies, and yogurt ricotta. The pasta itself was long flat ribbons and cooked perfectly al dente. I liked that the pasta wasn't swimming in a thick heavy sauce but I did think it was a bit oily and I think I had just eaten too much food at this point to fully enjoy it.
All in all, I thought the service was lovely and the food had great aspects to it. I can see how it's a natural higher end extension of Taim, but to me, nothing will really beat Taim in terms of straight up amazing Middle Eastern food but this is worth a trek if you're looking for something fancier than a falafel sandwich. Total bill: ~$120 with a bottle of wine
Photo Credit: Yelp
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