Holy Land Restaurant

Holy Land Restaurant in the Lake Merritt area has outstanding Kosher (Meat) food. It's ultra-casual, and I wouldn't care to have a special-occasion meal there, but as far as the food is concerned, I've eaten my way through the menu and never once gone wrong. Anything made with lamb here is especially good. REPLY (6 Replies) (by mamachef, created September 7, 2010)

»Oakland: Holy Land - The mint lemonade is magic

I'm rating Holy Land five stars just for the lemonade. This is the first item that will be added to my top ten tastes of 2010.

The title I credit to a yelp poster because that just nails it. The poster went on to say "I think it's possible to build a religion around the Holy Land lemonade"

Amen

It is made to order ... a beautiful mint-green frothy slushie with bits of pulp and mint....+READ I'm rating Holy Land five stars just for the lemonade. This is the first item that will be added to my top ten tastes of 2010.

The title I credit to a yelp poster because that just nails it. The poster went on to say "I think it's possible to build a religion around the Holy Land lemonade"

Amen

It is made to order ... a beautiful mint-green frothy slushie with bits of pulp and mint. Excellent. Simply excellent.

I guess this is an Israli drink. In that case Israel wins as the country with the best lemonade. It is really called lemon nana. Nana is a specific variety of mint. Here's a recipe I found.
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/lemonade-slushies-with-mint-and-lemon-verbena

Since it is made to order, you can tell them how sweet you would like it.

Earlier in the day I had lunch at a new Kosher Israeli restaurant in Montclair called Amba.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/678521

I tried the mint lemonade there and it was pretty weak (thought the hummus is great)

Anyway, my real reason for visiting Holy Land was to try the malawach and compare it to the version I tried at Oakland Kosher Market yesterday
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/677982

Malawach is a thick fried pancake, and it consists of lots of thin layers of puff pastry. It comes with crushed tomatoes.

In the Oakland Kosher Market discussion it was compared to Malabar paratha. After this second try, I still maintain it is a latke made with puff pastry rather than potatoes. It has that same oily quality about it.

Even though Holy Land makes their own malawach, I liked the Oakland Kosher Market version better though I think it is a frozen Saba version. This was flatter and not as flakey.

The crushed tomatoes were WAY better at Holy Land. Though they were winter tomatoes, they were almost red unlike the pale pink version at Oakland Kosher Market. To draw every bit of flavor out of those tomatoes, they were highly salted and mixed with parsley.

I've never been to Holy Land before. It is really, really tiny and even with a print out from Mapquest, I had trouble finding it.

It is worth seeking out just for that lemonade which I never would have thought of trying if it wasn't for my earlier visit to Amba.-COLLAPSE / REPLY (20 Replies) (by rworange, created January 5, 2010)