Piccolino

About

When the Anna Ticho restaurant owner/manager, Nava Bibi, knew their restaurant was going to be closed for a year for renovations, she started looking around for a new location. In Music Square, part of Nachal Shiva, she found the answer---a very typical Jerusalem building, 150 years old, which, 100 years ago, had served as the oven where the Nachlat Shiva people brought their food to cook, especially on Fridays. They saw the potential to renovate it and Nava liked the concept of its location--by the square where, in nice weather, there would be live music from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. And so, after Rosh Hashanah, Piccolino opened. When you enter the arched entryway, you face the bar area with six bar stools and adjacent tables for eight. To the right is the Napoli side room, which seats 24 for a private party. Beyond that is the Roma room which seats 30. Off to the left of the bar room, where we sat, is the Firenze room, which seats 28; next to it and also reachable from the bar room is the tabun oven room with the appetizing display of appetizers adorning the long counter. The kitchen is beyond. Every room entered is arched with the natural Jerusalem stone. The name, Piccolino, comes from a very famous song about a poor old man working in Rome, very happy, singing and loved by everyone. Nava felt connected to it because their restaurant philosophy is to give customers not just food but happiness. She was fortunate to have Chef Batsheva Rot, who, for the past three years had been chef of the Israel Museum restaurant, which Nava also manages. Chef Rot had worked at the Adom Restaurant, abroad in Costa Rica and Ireland, and trained at the Tadmor School after working from the age of 17 as a waitress at Anna Ticho. The menu starts off with Buongorno--breakfasts from NIS 54-64, which we did not taste. On the menu under antipasti, there is a cheese platter, antipasti and meze. The chef started us sampling a half-size version of the antipasti (full size is NIS 72) which depends