Tali Lama: A Bombay Thali in the Eucalyptus Shade of Pardes Hanna

The samosa arrives still hissing from the fryer, its pastry the colour of wet sand, the potato and pea filling pressed into corners that crackle when you break them open. A thumbprint of tamarind sauce sits beside it, and beyond the open kitchen window the eucalyptus leaves of the HaOranim courtyard hang motionless in the late afternoon light. Two women at the next table are eating with their hands, tearing chapati into precise triangles. A toddler in a sun hat is staring, transfixed, at a tray of saffron rice making its way to a far table. This is Tali Lama on a Tuesday in Pardes Hanna, and it is one of the quiet good things that has happened to Israeli dining in the last five years.

Tali Lama began as a fantasy in Daniel Maizels' head, born somewhere on a long trip through India, and grew through three improbable lives before it ever had a dining room. First it was a delivery operation in Herzliya, then a ghost kitchen in Netanya, then a tiny takeout window on Derech Menachem Begin in Tel Aviv aimed at the lunch trade in the office towers. Daniel runs the kitchen. His wife Aviv, who walked away from a career in sales the week she gave birth to their second daughter, runs everything else. The Pardes Hanna branch is where the project finally got the room it always wanted: a courtyard, a proper service line, neighbours, regulars, time to spice things slowly.