Lorenz & Mintz: Where the Galilee Meets a Templar Courtyard

The butter announces itself before you see the kitchen. A warm, yeasty wave rolls through the courtyard from behind thick stone walls, mingling with caramelized sugar and the green scent of herbs drifting past the canopy of a tree that has watched this compound change hands for over a century. A waiter crosses the garden carrying a tray of croissants so deeply golden they seem to radiate heat. At the far end, a couple splits a brioche roll in the shade, their coffee steaming in simple white cups. It is a weekday morning in Neve Tzedek, before the galleries open and the boutiques pull back their shutters, and Lorenz & Mintz is doing what it has done since 2017: turning the first meal of the day into something worth remembering.

Chef Nili Cohen Mintz grew up cooking in the Galilee. She and her husband Uri ran a restaurant in Beit Lechem HaGlilit before relocating south to Tel Aviv, and the sensibility she carried from those northern hills shapes everything on this menu. The technique is Parisian, precise, almost architectural in its layering. The instinct is Galilean: generous, earthy, unafraid of abundance.