While workers complete the last acts of demolition, let's get into the head of architect Elisabeth Knapp for a moment.
Knapp has been involved with the project since the summer, when owners Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov led her around to see prospective spaces. (Even in a strong restaurant climate such as now, there are at least a dozen restaurants, both in business and out of business, in play at any one time.)
The Swarthmore-based Knapp is a veteran architect who's gotten into the restaurant game only relatively recently, in 2000. Her first was Ansill in Queen Village. She then did Xochitl in Society Hill -- for Cook and Solomonov. Next up was Fuji in Haddonfield.
When Cook approached Knapp about Zahav, "he told me, `Elisabeth, this will be right up your alley,' " she says.
Knapp spent a good portion of her childhood in the Middle East. She's a child of an American-born foreign-service worker and lived in Europe till age 5, when the family moved to Libya. She's lived in Baghdad, Tehran and Beirut, where she went to high school. Zahav is rooted in Israel --and, oddly, "that's the one place [in the Middle East] I haven't been to," Knapp says.
Knapp says that overall, the goal is to make Zahav's casual dining area resemble an outside courtyard. "Of course," Knapp says, "that's not literal." The floor tile in that space, the stone pavers, essentially are an "outside" material.
She also wants to use Jerusalem stone on certain key walls, such as those behind the bar. Handmade iron and glass windows will divide the open kitchen from the seating; they'll also keep flaming meat from the patrons. Tables will be tough-hewn wood.
"What we're trying to not do is any kind of literal Middle Eastern space. We're trying to choose materials that are evocative of materials used in Jerusalem, and then do it in a somewhat more contemporary and, at the same time, rustic way," she says.
The fine-dining space won't be elegant, per se, in terms of treatments but will be richer in terms of materials and colors, she says. Think fabrics, curtains and decorative rugs.
Photos: That's Cook with Knapp. At top, Cook's hand on the blueprints.