Sunset Kitchen: Where the Sea Paints Your Table Gold

The light shifts first. You notice it before the food arrives, before the waiter finishes describing the evening's specials, before your cocktail even touches the table. A warm amber glow rolls across the dining room at 60 Eli Landau Street, flooding the floor to ceiling windows of the Daniel Herzliya Hotel's newest restaurant. Outside, the Mediterranean stretches flat and endless toward a horizon that, at precisely 19:20 on a summer evening, turns the color of apricot jam. This is the moment Chef Dror Sofrin built his restaurant around. Not just the food, though the food is excellent. The moment when the sky, the sea, and a well composed plate of tuna crudo all conspire to make you forget you are sitting in a hotel.

The kitchen at Sunset Kitchen operates along two axes: Italian dairy tradition and Eastern Mediterranean seafood. Chef Dror Sofrin, whose name circulates among Herzliya Pituach regulars as someone who takes freshness personally, has built a menu that leans on seasonal ingredients and a wood fired oven that dominates the back of the house. The starter section alone runs to eight dishes, each one demonstrating a kitchen that knows when to be bold and when to hold back.