Lev Skuditsky
Google
The second time my family and I found ourselves wandering the cobbled lanes of this little artists’ village, we once again let our noses lead us to the half‑hidden doorway of Dona Rosa. You don’t so much enter the restaurant as slip backstage: the entrance is braided together with another eatery’s kitchen door, so for a moment you wonder whether you’ve trespassed where only chefs should tread. But then the glow of the grill hits you, the wood smoke curls around your senses, and you realise you’ve arrived exactly where good meat lives.
Our first visit was born of empty wallets and suddenly ravenous children. We needed something honest and filling, and fast. For about 150 ₪ the four of us shared shredded beef that melted like confit, a fat chorizo that snapped with paprika, baked potatoes still humming with heat, and a simple salad that tasted of market mornings. It was the kind of meal that reminds you value isn’t the enemy of flavour; we left licking salt from our lips and promising to return when fortunes improved.
Today we kept that promise, armed with a healthier budget and my own lifetime of butchery behind the counter. We ordered the priciest trio of steaks on the menu—striploin, filet mignon, and rib‑eye—and I watched each cut arrive like old colleagues from another life. The striploin (what locals call “sinta”) carried the tell‑tale outer sinew I used to trim in my sleep. I sliced it away instinctively, though I worried for the uninitiated who might wrestle with that gristle and miss the Maillard‑kissed crust I sacrificed in the process. The filet, lean as a marathon runner, arrived medium‑rare yet still a touch parched—no surprise from a muscle that never learned indulgence. And the rib‑eye, Israel’s beloved “entrecôte,” brought its own collage of membranes and fat pockets, complicated further by being cut thinner than a butcher’s ideal; blink and you overshoot medium‑rare.
Yet there is alchemy in simplicity: coarse salt, a rough‑ground pepper mix, and undeniably high‑grade beef—even when not scrubbed as clean as I would have done—can still coax a grin from a man who knows his primal cuts. Service was swift, almost urgent, and the room itself feels like a smokehouse chapel: authentic, glowing, and thick with the perfume of burning wood. Hours later, back on my sofa, my clothes and hair still whisper campfire secrets; it’s charming in memory, if a little unsettling in practice.
Will we return the next time our path twists through this village? Almost certainly. Dona Rosa isn’t flawless, but its imperfections are the kind a butcher can forgive—because beneath the stray sinew and lingering smoke lies a heart that beats for meat, and that’s a rhythm I will always follow.
P.S. I meant to capture a mouth‑watering photo of the meat platter, but the instant that colossal dish hit the table, every drop of blood rushed from my brain to my taste buds. I only remembered the camera when the plates were clean again. Does that say more about my love of meat, or about a presentation so compelling it short‑circuits a former butcher’s self‑control? I’ll let you be the judge.
