The drywall dust was flying wildly at Zahav on Tuesday (12/4) as a crew led by the owners' friend Ofer Shlomo started two weeks of demolition. The workers are stripping the dining room down to the studs and bare floor, removing a bar counter in front of the open kitchen, a low divider wall, a liquor cabinet, and the liquor bar. Most of the kitchen equipment will remain, and the partners -- who got the keys over the weekend -- say that the prep kitchen in the back just needs to be majorly cleaned. There's a recording studio next door, and the owners have promised to 'knock off" the racket during recording sessions. (As an aside, the retail tenants in that low-slung building on the north end of the Society Hill Towers complex have not been "treated" to construction noise too much over the years. Restaurants stuck around. It was the Copper Penny from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. Sfizzio, the last restaurant, opened in 1998 and closed around Halloween.)
Chef Michael Solomonov, always a good sport, picked up a sledge and got into the work himself. See video.
The day had a serious/religious side, as Solomonov helped to install on the front doorpost a mezuzah, a small case containing a piece of parchment bearing Torah verses. Though the restaurant will not be kosher, the owners are Jewish. See video.