Ines: A New Petah Tikva Steakhouse With a Home Kitchen Beating Inside It

The first thing you register at Ines is the smell of charcoal, cutting through the office park air the moment you step out of the Park HaOgen garage. It is Tuesday, 20:15, and the light spilling from the ground floor entrance at Hasivim 18 is the color of an oil lamp: warm, dense, deliberate. Inside, a low table by the pass holds a cast iron skillet still hissing over a small brazier, and a server carries a wooden board loaded with pargit skewers past a family celebrating a bat mitzvah in the private room off the far wall. Somewhere behind the bar, a bottle of arak is being poured into a heavy tumbler while a cocktail shaker rattles beside it. This is a new steakhouse in a city that already has its share of them, and within the first twenty seconds it is clear Ines is trying for something more textured than the standard entrecote and skewer procession.

The menu at Ines splits cleanly into two columns, and the split is the whole story. On one side sits a classic Israeli steakhouse spine: selected meats over live fire, kebab shaped and grilled to order, pargit thigh cooked hot and fast on the flame, liver seared until the outside crisps and the inside stays pink, shawarma stacked and shaved for both plate and pita service, and salmon offered as the fish alternative for tables that need one. This is the grill work Petah Tikva grew up on and continues to demand. The kitchen executes it with the composure of an operation that took time to open, meaning meats arrive at the temperature they were called for, seasoning stays confident without shouting, and the accompanying salads are numerous enough that the pre-main table starts to fill with color the moment the first plate lands. On the other side sits the ethnic home cooking section, and this is where Ines shows its hand. Libyan mafroom, stuffed vegetables braised until the meat inside softens against a tomato and cumin gravy. Moussaka in the Balkan register, layered eggplant and ground beef under a golden top. Meatballs in a slow sauce that gets darker as the pot goes on. Hungarian goulash. Persian khoresht sabzi, all herbs and lime and red beans and cubes of beef that surrender at the fork. Persian gondi, chickpea and chicken dumplings that give away their ancestry the moment they hit the broth. And then, running through the whole ethnic column like a spine, asado and long braised beef: the Israeli grandmother's Friday dish scaled up for a Tuesday night dinner. This is a menu that respects both the grill man at the fire and the woman with the pot on the low heat. Few steakhouses attempt that. Ines writes it into its opening statement.