TATAMI Sushi and Asian Kitchen

December 2019
TATAMI is a classic Asian restaurant offering a good selection of Asian style meat and veggie dishes and sushi. Tatami is a find. There are very few Asian-style restaurants of this quality with a teudat kashrut, and few quality kosher restaurants of any type in Ramat Aviv.

Thank you W., one of our loyal members, who recommended TATAMI. There is nothing like a personal recommendation. On this lead, we visited the restaurant with high expectations, which were definitely met. TATAMI is an unusually welcoming restaurant with comfortable seating, good food, charming service, and the personal touch.

eLuna Visits TATAMI Restaurant
Despite the inviting outdoor patio (see above), we chose to sit inside on the cool evening of our visit. The indoor area has a small number of tables and seating at a long bar. The indoor seating area can be expanded to a space downstairs.

The aesthetic stylized menu offers a fine selection of veggie and meat noodle and rice dishes. There are several pages of different types of Sushi, including fish and veggie options.

The sushi is a must at TATAM so we started our dinner with a shared i/o roll (shown above). I am a big skeptic about eating raw fish, but TATAMI gives a very clean impression, so we compromised by choosing the sushi with salmon tempura. This was served with bowls of soy sauce, spicy mayonnaise, and a healthy dollop of wasabi. We know our sushi, and this was good sushi.

My companion loves soup, so soup it is. He chose the Tom Ka Gai soup, a piquant Thai soup with chunks of cherry tomatoes, sliced mushrooms, coriander leaves (cilantro) and the best part - the soup contained a generous amount of sliced chicken white meat. Cocoanut milk gave the soup a milky texture and the ginger made it somewhat spicy, with a mild burn. He enjoyed the substantial chewiness of the chicken, mushrooms and tomatoes, enhanced by the ginger flavor, but pronounced this a soup that may not be for everyone.

For my main I chose the Yasai Vegetable Tempura. This is my favorite, and I was glad to see this dish on the menu as many times it is not offered. Out came a heaping bowl of tempura vegetables of all sorts: peppers, mushrooms, carrots, just to name a few. The veggies were served warm and crispy and were served with a small dish of teriyaki sauce on the side. I was one very happy customer. The serving was quite generous but with a little help from my companion we did it justice. We found that all of the dishes that we tried at Tatami, from the soup, the starters and through to the main dishes, were generous and suitable for sharing.

For his main course my companion was attracted to the Rice/Noodles section of the menu. Two curry dishes on the menu particularly caught his eye: Red Hot Chili Curry and Mumbai Gold Curry. He didn’t particularly want a beef dish, and his sense of discretion kicked in, so that ruled out the hot chili dish, and the chicken strips in the Mumbai curry sounded too similar to the Tom Ka Gai soup, so he decided to save those dishes for a return trip.

He chose the TATAMI noodles with meat because it appears to be a signature dish of the restaurant, it was clearly different from the soup, and smoked goose sounded just too good to pass up. The TATAMI noodles with meat is a meat dish with a stir-fried mixture of smoked goose breast, string beans, two kinds of mushrooms and almonds and crispy onions for crunch, all smothering a heap of soft rice noodles. The goose gave the whole dish a smoky flavor, and the vegetables were cooked just right, not limp.

After the sushi, the soup, and some of my tempura vegetables, he could not finish the noodles. Not a problem. The server packed it up for us with a smile, and it became lunch the following day.

The encore to this lovely meal was the sweet sushi dessert roll. It was totally not necessary after that yummy and filling dinner, so after tasting a few pieces we left the rest to the charming young couple at the next table.

Take Away: The restaurant does a lively take away business. Currently the restaurant works only with pick up orders. During our short visit, there was a steady stream of people picking up orders.

Getting There: TATAMI restaurant is at the far western end of the shopping center. There is street parking, with some turn over in those spaces. We went straight to the underground garage of the shopping center, also at 7 Einstein, just a door or two before the restaurant, There is easy access to the restaurant from the shopping center's underground parking. When you exit the parking lot turn right, and walk till the end of the shops.

From the Menu: Tatami sushi roll NIS 49. Soup NIS 44. Yasi vegetable tempura NIS 54.Tatami Noodles NIS 68. Red Hot Chili Curry NIS 69. Mumbai Gold Curry NIS 68