A gourmet restaurant in a gas station? Well, there are stranger things in life.
We have visited BP on the Coastal Highway several times, and we both got the distinct impression this time that it is aiming to be less of a diner and more of an upmarket restaurant.
The wooden tables are well spread out, and while the owners haven’t gone as far as using tablecloths, there are now faux crystal glasses for cold drinks and pretty blue-patterned dishes.
The menu offers a very large choice in all the courses, and amazingly for an Israeli restaurant, the English menu was impeccable – not one even minor mistake detectable.
What's on the menu at BP?
For starters, one of us chose a dish of portobello mushrooms served with tehina, and the other chose skewers of goose breast.
The first dish consisted of three massive mushrooms which seem to have been fried, as they were crispy, and they came with a dish of tehina and a sweetish BBQ sauce. It was both nutritious and delicious – a good combination (NIS 49).
The second starter, the goose breast skewers, comprised small pieces of the gamy bird, served on a puree of potatoes with sides of roasted garlic and onion jam (NIS 69). The chef had managed to find pieces of the goose that were not at all fatty, and the sweet sauce on the side was the perfect accompaniment.
My choice of main course was a skewer: a mix of chicken and veal, a huge amount of each meat, cut into small pieces. If you like cumin as a spice, this is the dish for you. Strangely, it came without a sauce but with a pita on a plate. I had to ask for mustard, and our waiter brought an ersatz Heinz version – mustard spread instead of good old Dijon. This is something that should be rectified posthaste.
I was also served pickled vegetables and amba, and a side dish of cut-up salad and savory rice, which was quite pleasantly flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon (NIS 78).
My companion chose asado, which was very soft and seemed to have been stewed for hours, with more of the great cooked garlic, some homemade chimichurri, and very good homemade hummus, which really seemed to be more wholesome than the store-bought variety (NIS 159).
Dessert was called Chocolate Intoxication. It consisted of ice cream in chocolate sauce with halva strands and nuts on top. The chocolate sauce hardened on the ice cream, making it difficult to resist (NIS 48).
Throughout the meal we had excellent service from our waiter, Matanel, who was helpful and efficient. He would have been equally at home serving at the Ritz.
It’s good to know that just a few miles down the road from our home, there is a restaurant of this high standard available.
- BP restaurant
- Paz Gas Station
- Coastal Road, Netanya
- Tel: 074-710-0017
- Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m. until late. Friday, closed. Saturday night, open 1 hour, 40 minutes after Shabbat until 1 a.m.
- Kashrut: Netanya Rabbinate
- Wheelchair accessible
The writer was a guest of the restaurant.
