Excellent entrecote in the most unexpected place

Over the past two years, it seems as if all meat lovers in the country are making a pilgrimage to Jager in Kiryat Ono. The butcher shop with the attached restaurant has made a name for itself as a place for connoisseurs. If in recent years Tel Aviv exported a variety of restaurants to Kiryat Ono, such as Moti Titman's Jones and Makom Shel Basar, now the tables are turning, and the people behind Jager opened a Tel Aviv branch a few weeks ago in the Ramat Aviv Mall.

Eating at a mall has always been considered a default choice for those who don't know or can't do better; no one expects culinary news from a shopping center. And so, Jager joins the new food court of the Ramat Aviv Mall, alongside the Asian food chain Choka and McDonald's, but also Berta – the new Italian restaurant by chef Yossi Shitrit.

So we showed up and checked. First of all, let's note: Jager in the Ramat Aviv Mall is a stall, even if it looks fancy. Ordering and serving are self-service, you pay at a terminal. Not exactly a restaurant, but the prices definitely are. We ordered a Caesar salad, a cheeseburger, and a 300-gram entrecote.

The only dish that was just standard, albeit good, was the Caesar salad. But we didn't gather for that. The hamburger was everything we heard about: juicy, almost dripping, cooked to perfection to the medium-rare degree we ordered, the cheese was good, and so was the bun. An excellent hamburger that stands up to the standard of hamburger powerhouses like Vitrina, GDB, and Meatbar. The fries were also fine.

The real surprise was the entrecote. 300 grams of excellent meat sliced into pieces for easy devouring, and it came with good chimichurri on the side. This was a steak that could give a fight to the best steaks in the city. My only complaint against it is that it cools down quickly despite the metal plate on which it is served. Maybe it's the mall's formidable air conditioning, maybe it's worth considering a hot plate.

Jager are professionals after all and also charge 174 shekels for it – not cheap. In Jager's defense, I will note that entrecotes cost more in other places, and that most of the time they serve a flank steak for 99 shekels. After a few days we returned and tasted it too, and it was excellent, including the potatoes in olive oil and herbs served next to it. What fun.

There are no desserts at Jager, so we went down for a scoop of ice cream at Otello after the meal. It is very strange to eat a 300-shekel meal on shared benches for all the restaurants in the mall, when below you there is a feeling that the whole world has come shopping during the summer vacation. On the other hand, what is life if not a collection of strange experiences.

Before the tip:

Cheeseburger meal: 89 shekels
300-gram entrecote: 185 shekels (including an 11-shekel supplement for a Caesar salad)
Flank steak meal: 99 shekels
Small Estrella beer: 29 shekels