70 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} Mango and pomegranate might not be the first ingredients that come to mind when you think of Jewish food, but you’ll find them on the menu at Bubbelah, a new eatery in Menlo Park offering a tasty education in this wide-ranging cuisine. Known for his Italian restaurants, Che Fico in San Francisco to share that Jewish food is so much more than matzoh ball soup, latkes and brisket.” Bubbelah (an affectionate word that means “darling” in Yiddish) is a casual dining restaurant with a cheerful ambience and sunflower-design tabletops. It replaced the shortlived Mercato di Che Fico in Springline, the luxury live-work complex whose many restaurants are a beacon for foodies on the Midpeninsula. After a quick makeover, the reborn space opened as Bubbelah in June. Many of the eatery’s dishes are Sephardic or Mizrahi, which might be less familiar than the Eastern European food associated with Jewish delis. On the menu you’ll find amba, an Iraqi-Jewish sauce composed of pickled fermented mangoes, that pairs well with David’s fried potatoes, which also come with feta cheese, tahina, chiles and Aleppo pepper. The falafel, deep-fried chickpea balls, have bright-green centers revealing abundant parsley, mint and cilantro. Arayes is a Lebanese pita sandwich stuffed with ground beef and served with yogurt sauce and schug, a garlicky and herbaceous Yemenite condiment. I found pomegranate arils in several of my dishes: muhammara, a walnut-red bell pepper spread; the spiced carrots with harissa, almonds and shallots; labneh, a strained yogurt topped with toasted sesame seeds and sumac; matbucha, a North African spiced RESTAURANT newish noshing words by SHARON MCDONNELL • photography by PAULETTE PHLIPOT and its Peninsula outpost Che Fico Parco Menlo, chef and coowner David Nayfeld’s Bubbelah is a return to his roots as the son of Jewish immigrants from Belarus, a former Soviet republic. “The world of Jewish food is vast, due to the diaspora and migration to so many countries,” David says. “I love the flavors, which are bold and beautiful, and want
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