The Making of Zahav

It's been 3½ months since Zahav opened. How does it rate? Don't ask your blogger. I'm no critic. Here's what my colleague Rick Nichols had to say.

Zahav had two nights of "friends-and-family" test dinners over the weekend.

Here, in a photo by Michael T. Regan taken Saturday night, is a good view of the dining room. Note the kitchen at right through the window frames and the bar at left. The lighting looks so much better here than in the showroom at Material Culture, eh?

Today is exactly five months since Mike Solomonov (or Mike Solo, as everyone calls him) wielded a sledge and started demolition -- ceremoniously, of course -- on the $700,000-plus project. I'll do a recap later in the week.

Though the liquor license is not physically in hand -- they're expecting it soon -- dinner starts today at 5 p.m., and it'll be open nightly. (If the license doesn't arrive today, they plan to pour complimentary wine, as many restaurants do while waiting for Harrisburg.) I'm told that tonight is not "fully committed."

The Quarter (tucked behind the curtains in the rear of the photo) won't open right away.

See the menu here.

Below is a photo of pretty much the same view on Dec. 23, though the kitchen is not shown.

As of the afternoon of May 1, Zahav is fully permitted with the city, and the liquor license is in hand. The restaurant will open the evening of Monday, May 5.

To call this last step in the process a Herculean feat is entirely, 100-percent accurate.

To explain:

Zahav will be the third restaurant opening for Steve Cook, after Marigold in West Philly and Xochitl in Society Hill. Cook knows the drill.

In the beginning -- sorry to get all biblical -- a restaurateur brings his plans to the city Health Department for review, and submits a check. In Zahav's case, the check was $815. The city came back with demands for a partition between hand sinks and a garbage disposal installed in a different sink.

Construction proceeded. The city inspected the electrical and plumbing work along the way. The city demanded a separate exhaust hood when inspectors realized that a separate grill was being added. The fire system was inspected last.

Last Friday (4/25), the city health inspector finished the final inspection, and the restaurant passed. Zahav got the certificate.

Cook wanted to go to the Municipal Services Building to swap the certificate for a food license, but it was found that the liquor license had unpaid city taxes. This started wrangling among Zahav attorney Barry Goldstein, the seller of the license and the city Law Department.

The matter was resolved Tuesday morning, and Cook went to the Law Department at 1515 Arch St. to obtain a tax-clearance letter to prove it. Letter in his briefcase, Cook walked briskly to the Municipal Services Building and obtained numbers to wait in two lines: One, with the Revenue Department to get his tax ID number, and another at Licenses and Inspections to get his business-privilege license and the food license.

Cook waited nearly an hour in the Revenue line. The transaction went smoothly; a kind clerk told him in five minutes that he could use the same tax number as Xochitl's. Back in the lobby, he wanted nearly three hours for a clerk at L&I to tell him that L&I had no idea where Zahav was.

Huh?

Apparently, there's a disconnection between Health and L&I. The Health Department had visited the previous restaurants in Zahav's space many times over the years. L&I had no idea what the address "237 St. James Place" meant. How could L&I issue a license to something that didn't exist?

Cook was sent away.

On his way back to Zahav -- and remember, this is less than a week from the projected opening -- his cell rang. It was Andrew Eisenstein, a real estate developer friend and Penn classmate, who owns Xochitl's building. Eisenstein heard Cook's story and called a friend who's an attorney, well-versed in zoning matters. They conferenced. The attorney told Cook, "Fax me everything you have."

Twenty-hour hours later, the matter was resolved.

Cook won't disclose the legal bill. "I won't even look at it," he said. "I don't want to kill the buzz. It would pale in comparison to what we would lose from not being open."

I started by calling the effort Herculean. The lawyer who took the case: Hercules Grigos of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel.

Steve Cook spent the better part of the day in various city agencies.

He's still awaiting crucial permits. Hence, his expression at the Municipal Services Building.

Stay tuned.

While Steve Cook sweats out the licensing issue -- and he's hoping for a "go" on Wednesday morning with the city officials -- we now can concern ourselves with Zahav's menus.

See this entry on "Food & Drinq."

Opening is still up for May 5, so stay tuned.

Zahav has run into a last-minute bump in its so far fairly smooth road to opening.

The partners chose to buy the liquor license used by the previous occupant, Sfizzo.
The city is owed thousands of dollars in taxes on that license.
Zahav coowner Steve Cook says the Sfizzio license holder -- which public records identify as Letitia Inc., with a president of William Trimarco -- had agreed to pay the debt to the city.
Zahav had a successful city health inspection on Friday, and was issued a temporary health certificate, which Cook brought right over to the city Department of Licenses & Inspections to obtain the final certificates that would allow the restaurant to get the liquor license.
On his way there, his lawyer Barry Goldstein called him back. The debt had not been paid.
Supposedly, the seller of the license is working things out with the city.
Cook hopes that the issue will be resolved by tomorrow (Tuesday), when the health certificate expires.

With the morning on Friday April 25 came a crane, and with the crane came workers, and with the workers came tools and a sign. The blue "Sfizzo" sign that's hung on the facade for the last 10 years came off the brick, and the new Zahav sign went up.

The first public dinnertime will be Monday, May 5 -- about one month late. In the grand scheme of things, that's not too bad. Take the huge market/bistro/coffee bar/restaurant Maia out in Villanova, which is at least six months late. Time is money, and every day without revenue means more debt.

Speaking of going up, Steve Cook relates a tale of budgets:

Zahav is going to end up 10 to 15 percent over budget. A lot of money, yes, but for a restaurant, not so extraordinary.

How did we end up in this situation? Lots of ways really, but I think Mike Solomonov summed it up yesterday when he said: "Everything costs so much goddamned money!"

We had to buy a new exhaust hood to accommodate the open coal cooking, of course, and that's the biggest component of our budget deficit. The other reasons are small, but they add up. There's a lot of metal that goes into restaurants, and metal is a lot more expensive than the last time i prepared a budget to open a restaurant. So far, we’ve spent about $25,000 on banking and legal fees (and we’re not finished yet), which is a lot more than I’ve ever spent before.

We’ve had to replace a few pieces of kitchen equipment that were beyond repair. Sometimes you forget to budget for sales tax, and when you buy $50,000 worth of equipment, the tax is a big number.

When you open late (we're running about a month behind schedule) your operating costs start creeping up - you have to pay utilities and insurance from day 1 and when you bring on key employees to prepare for the opening, it can start to feel like all your pockets have holes in them.

There are things you can do when the budget is running away from you. in the last few weeks, we've made some tough decisions on some of the finishes we planned on using. Substituting wood countertops in place of stone, for example, or eliminating intricate tile work that could take days of skilled labor to complete.

There is strange sense of euphoria that comes with saving a few thousand dollars, maybe only surpassed by the feeling of spending a few thousand dollars.

And now there are a million little decisions to make, and they always seem to hinge on economics. For example, you might decide not to put a shelf exactly where you want it, because there's a light switch in the way and it would take half a day of labor to relocate the switch, patch the drywall and re-paint it.

For the most part though, it's like steering a giant ship: you probably needed to turn the wheel BEFORE you saw the iceberg to avoid a collision. In other words, the expensive decisions were made a long time ago, when the budget was still the budget. The money we're spending now -- on mop buckets and liquor licenses and paint -- is necessary, not discretionary.

The prospect of going over budget used to keep me up nights. But about a month ago, a sense of calm came over me. There comes a point in every restaurant buildout and opening (at least the ones I’ve been involved with), when you just have to give yourself over to the project. You put your head down and fight your way to the finish line. there is no consolation prize for almost opening a restaurant. As my football coach used to say, coming in second place is just being the first loser. Besides, now that we’re only a few weeks away from actually opening, I’ve got other things keeping me up at night.

General manager Max Shapiro has been charged with creating some fancy drinks to serve at Zahav's bar.

In this piece by Inquirer video producer Steven Benjamin -- shot in Shapiro's "test bar" (Xochitl in Society Hill) -- he demonstrates the making of three of them. The "almond milk" in the drink called "Milk and Honey" consists of ground, blanched almonds, water and salt.

Click here to view. You'll need a flash player. You should have one anyway.

Even before it serves its first patron, Zahav has made it to the pages of Food & Wine.

The piece, which describes the March trip to Israel and appears in the May issue, begins:

"When I go home to Israel, I’m on a strict five-meal-a-day eating regimen,” says Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov. “I just can’t get the same flavors here in the States.” Recently, he set out to change that: Solomonov, who spent the past two years as executive chef of Marigold Kitchen, has opened a new restaurant, Zahav, serving the foods of his home country: smooth, nutty hummus; light, chewy Yemenite flatbread; and dozens of variations of eggplant dishes, ranging from a tangy stew to sabich, a fried-eggplant pita sandwich. To educate and inspire his staff before Zahav’s opening, Solomonov took them on a weeklong tour of the restaurants in Jaffa and Tel Aviv and around Ganei Yehuda, the small Israeli community where he was born.

The piece includes such recipes as Israeli hummus with paprika and whole chickpeas; tangy twice-cooked eggplants with red peppers; tomato-pepper stew with poached eggs and harissa; Yemenite flatbreads; and lemonade slushies with mint and lemon verbena.

Photo Amit Geron:

Budgetary constraints have forced a change in the floor selection in The Quarter, the fancier room at Zahav. Instead of bright carpets stitched together, they've gone with a flooring of barn wood.

The niche at rear will house a gurgling fountain.

Photo: Charles Fox / Inquirer Staff Photographer