Safta

Safta Restaurant Review:

About the restaurant & décor: Chef and cookbook author Alon Shaya embraces his cultural heritage --- the foods of his native Israel --- at this contemporary restaurant inside The Source Hotel. Safta is the second project from Pomegranate Hospitality, which Shaya operates with wife and co-restaurateur, Emily Shaya. Bedecked with blush-hued walls, high ceilings, a large exhibition kitchen with wood-burning ovens, fresh orchids propped on the shelves, rose-embossed glassware and walls of windows that peer over the far-reaching city skyline that stretches to the Rocky Mountains, it's a striking performance space that's steeped in avant-garde femininity.

Likes: Soft, feminine décor; lovely presentations and remarkably good hummus and pita bread.
Dislikes: On busy evenings, service can be agonizingly slow and disorganized.

About the food: Safta, which means “grandmother” in Hebrew, is an ode to modern Israeli cooking --- an homage that struts memorable variations of hummus, one of which involves blue crab meat, fresh mint, sweet corn and a jolt of lemon. Share tabouleh, spiked with toasted almonds; lutenitsa, a stewed dish of roasted eggplant, peppers, tomato and garlic; or a Moroccan carrot salad with crispy lentils. The house-baked pita bread, inflated and lightly charred, doubles as a blank canvas for several plates, and while it's all too easy to fill up on the fresh-baked, slow-risen bread, practice restraint and you'll be rewarded with harissa roasted chicken, duck matzo ball soup and lovely falafel, misshapen spheres specked with Middle Eastern spices and herbs. Desserts include a squash babka and a progressive labneh cheesecake festooned with orange blossom candied nuts and pomegranate caramel.

About the drinks: The beverage syllabus proffers beers, ciders, cocktails like the The Fig Picture concocted with bourbon, fig, byrrh, lemon and egg, as well as wines from Greece, Israel and Lebanon.