Newshi Asian and Sushi Restaurant

September 2023
Dam Hamaccabim Boulevard is the city's latest effort to create an outdoor leisure and entertainment area in Modiin. This boulevard has restaurants and shops one after another on either side of the length of the street. Each enterprise seems to have outdoor seating which makes this street with the grisly name a kind of block party.

Dam Hamaccabim (Maccabi blood) is actually a type of flower - red of course. Both the flower and the Maccabees have nothing to do with the restaurants and shops on the boulevard. The street is hopping even during the day, and the atmosphere is congenial. It beats eating in an indoor mall which is the primary alternative in Modiin.

The stand-out Asian restaurant on the boulevard is Newshi Asian and Sushi Restaurant. The menu offers a good variety of Asian style dishes. Meat is woven into many of the dishes, but there are also plenty of vegetarian options. My granddaughter and I chose Newshi for our ladies lunch, a tradition that we have cultivated over the years. This break from both our hectic lives gives us a chance to catch up and gives me a chance to appreciate the lovely young woman that my granddaughter has become.

The decor at Newshi is minimalist, the tables and chairs are basic and light colored, and very appropriate for the foods served. There are plenty of tables inside and more seating outdoors. The atmosphere is relaxed and nobody rushed us out the door.

We started with a shared order of Fish & Chips. The fish is tempura coated salmon and not white fish as I expected. Had I read the menu more carefully i would not have been as surprised. The fish is served with Hollandi Chips also called "Amsterdam chips." These are unique as they are made from specific potatoes and are fried several times to get the crispy consistency. You'll notice the quality of both the fish and the chips right away. Warning: you can't just eat one.

This is a sushi restaurant, so we are going to have sushi. My granddaughter eschews raw fish so to avoid the risk we stuck to the dishes marked vegetarian. The veggie choices were somewhat limited but we settled on the Rainbow sushi. I have come to expect a roll of sushi to come with just a spec of wasabi. Anticipating this i asked for extra wasabi and got enough for us and for the next table over. The sushi itself was tasty and just the pieces were just the right size to pop into your mouth.

My granddaughter zeroed in on the signature dish of this restaurant, the Crazy Wok. This is a generous bowl of noodles and vegetables in Teriyaki sauce. The twist of this dish is that the noodles are made of beets, and are thus red in color. A bowl of red noodles is somewhat jarring but at her insistence i tried the dish and was pleasantly surprised. Along with the red noodles, were chunks of salmon, broccoli, onions, mushrooms and cashew nuts. Hold the peanuts, she requested, and so we were peanut free. The dish was so generous that I took what remained home to saba who does not join us on lady's days. I know that he was waiting impatiently for his "shirayim." He dug right in and declared it delicious.

Every meal with my grandchildren ends with a dessert. There is no point in even asking. My granddaughter's first choice dessert was not available so we compromised on the hot fudge cake with a scoop of (definitely parve) ice cream instead. The dark chocolate cake was so rich that one spoon for each of us was all the sugar hit that we could take.

There appear to be some very nice restaurants on Dam Hamaccabim Boulevard so I look forward to many good meals in the good company of my grandchildren.


From the Menu
Kimchi pickled vegetables 19/26
Tempura cauliflower NIS 42
Fish & Chips NIS 54
Rainbow sushi NIS 52
Crazy Wok NIS 64
Hot fudge cake with ice cream NIS 46

Parking: Street parking is tight but there is underground parking in a public lot on Dam Hamaccabim Blvd