From Drug Dealing to Tel Aviv's Most Provocative Chef
Chef Tal Rashevsky went from a turbulent past of drug trafficking and rehabilitation to becoming a dominant, controversial figure in Tel Aviv's restaurant scene.
The line outside his restaurant starts forming in the early evening, stretching down the boulevard, and an hour from now, it will still be there. Customers wait forty minutes, sometimes an hour, just to get a plate of pasta or a schnitzel. Tal Rashevsky, the man behind all of this, watches them from the side. Some call him the pasta nazi, others dub him a pasta swindler because of the prices and the queues, but he would much prefer something sexier—the naked chef.
He has become a social media celebrity thanks to his penchant for bickering with customers who dare complain about the long wait. "I genuinely don't care if the business burns down, there's insurance," he said in a past interview with a smile that left it unclear whether he was exaggerating or dead serious. "I'm famous, my love. Focus on me." Rashevsky is an extraordinary figure in the local landscape; a chef turned media star with the most talked-about restaurants in Tel Aviv, who strangely stopped entering the kitchen altogether once success arrived.
Hard to Compare to Places Like Ruthie Brodo's—She Doesn't Stand a Chance
While other chefs make a point of wearing their aprons until the wee hours, Rashevsky focuses on management and persona-building. As we walk through his restaurant, Lava, he shows us the dishwashing room as if giving a tour of the Louvre. When asked if this restaurant is the most successful in the city, he lacks a single gram of false modesty. "There aren't many restaurants per square meter that make this kind of profitability," he explains. He doesn't hesitate to compare himself to the industry giants: "It's hard to take large places like Ruthie Brodo's and compare them to me. She doesn't stand a chance."
He also has a few words for Eyal Shani, the man who invented the culinary conversational culture in Israel. "I am more interesting than him because he has already done his thing. That persona is worn out," Rashevsky decrees. "The man is a genius, he introduced a whole culture of nonsense into Israeli cuisine, but it's time for them to go rest. I need to be there because I can bring more ratings than all of them combined."
This success seems almost illogical when you realize Rashevsky never formally studied cooking. He didn't work in prestigious restaurants or do stages in Paris. Before becoming the pasta king, he established failing cafes and hit total financial collapse. When he met his wife, Nethali, the situation was dire. "There were a lot of debts and it just kept piling up," she recounts. "I was pregnant, my parents lived on the third floor in Kadima, I suggested we move there, we had no choice."
At that exact moment, with his back against the wall and desperate necessity, the Gnocchi Shop was born. Rashevsky downloaded a recipe from the internet and began testing in the kitchen for 48 consecutive hours. "We had a cafe that made 200 shekels on a good day," he recalls. "My father told me I was going to fall flat on my face and it would be the biggest mistake of my life. I cried my eyes out because I didn't have another chance."
The Annoying Kid from Ramat Gan Who Became a Drug Dealer
But the story of the chef who learned to cook from YouTube is just the shell. Beneath it lies a secret few knew until today. Rashevsky, who grew up in an entirely normative family in Ramat Gan—a high-tech father and an accountant mother—always felt like an outcast. "Simply put, I wasn't popular. I had the face of an annoying kid, and it didn't work in my favor. I had a rough childhood."
The turning point came when his parents divorced and his father moved to Tel Aviv. Young Rashevsky found comfort in all the wrong places. "I connected with groups that were practically crime families. I idolized them," he admits in a low voice. "I entered that loop. It started with soft drugs, and I saw I was making great money from it." By the age of nineteen and a half, he was already deep in, dealing with hard drugs like cocaine.
"I was the worst criminal in history," he says with embarrassment. "The level of stupidity was at its peak. I would go down to the grocery store, the clerk would ask what I did for a living, and I would answer in front of the whole line: 'I deal in cocaine.' I thought it was funny, that no one would think I was serious. In retrospect, I understand I was screaming for someone to arrest me. I was suffering, it was an endless disgust. Everything was dark."
Nine Months of Fear
From there, the road to the detention cell in Abu Kabir was short. Rashevsky was tried for drug trafficking and awaited sentencing for nine months in the cellars of the detention facility. "I entered there with a bob haircut and a nose ring. You're in hell, 23 hours a day in a cell. I saw people committing suicide, very severe cases of violence. My life was in real danger."
The prosecution demanded seven years in prison. Rashevsky was already ready to agree to three years in a plea bargain out of sheer despair. If they hadn't released him that very day, he wouldn't have survived. For sure. At the very last moment, the judge decided to send him to an alternative sentence at the Retorno rehabilitation center.
Now, for the first time in 15 years, he has returned to Retorno. The place looks different today, but the memories are still alive. "It's a paradise that is also a hell," he describes as we stand near his old room. "Every day the sword was at my neck. If I get kicked out of here, I'm going back to prison. I had to do everything to survive, and that means things that are hard to imagine."
During the tour, we meet Rabbi Eitan Eckstein, CEO and founder of Retorno, who remembers Tal very well. "I realized you took all your knowledge and made people addicted to your restaurants," he laughs. Rashevsky smiles a bitter smile: "Today I'm an active addict who channels all that negative energy into positive things." When the rabbi reminds him of the Serenity Prayer, Rashevsky recites it by heart, though it is clear this moment is hard for him. "It's part of who I am," he says and falls silent.
The Motorized Monsters of the Boulevard
This obsessive energy that accompanied him through drugs and rehabilitation was channeled not only into food but also into another passion—building motorcycles. In his warehouse, he keeps motorized monsters that he built from scratch by himself, without knowing what a spark plug was at first. "I don't like being told I can't do something," he explains his motivation.
At home, with Nethali and their two children, the dynamic is different but still intense. The children call him a screamer, admitting that mom is the one who bakes better, while he is the household cook—on the rare occasions he actually does it, usually at 11:00 PM, and mostly for himself. Nethali, an actress and author, draws inspiration from the trouble Tal provides her for her writing. "It deals with the need to retell our story, down to the level of obsession," she says.
As we return to the boulevard, facing the endless queues, Rashevsky looks calmer. "When you start, you don't believe it will reach this scale. I was genuinely occupied with how I would manufacture unemployment for myself, and that has already happened. I could be unemployed today." The chef who used to be a drug dealer, the man once considered a social outcast who became one of the most powerful figures in Tel Aviv's restaurant industry, knows you cannot erase the past, but you can certainly turn it into a winning dish. "We won't have a future until we erase the past," he concludes.
