The new Bar Pronto has opened on Herzl Street in Tel Aviv, under chef and restaurateur Moshiko Gamlieli, with partners Itamar Navon and Roy Tzabag. The restaurant is Italian-Mediterranean, not kosher, serves dinner only, and asks guests to reserve ahead. Its menu has about 20 dishes, priced between 28 and 126 shekels, and the kitchen is currently open Monday through Saturday from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. The open-air terrace is expected to begin serving lunch soon.
The most prominent object in the room is an oversized Uri Lifshitz painting, “House of Slaughter,” hanging above the bar. Beyond that artwork, the team has changed nearly everything from the previous Pronto, including the design, staff, menu, atmosphere and pace. The only things kept were the name and the location, as a nod to the legendary Tel Aviv restaurant that spent three decades shaping the city’s dining scene, first on Nahmani Street under Rafi Adar and later on Herzl under David Frenkel.
Gamlieli, Navon and Tzabag came into the project after leaving their partnership in Radler, a brasserie on Nahalat Binyamin. Gamlieli said they realized they were “more soloists than we thought,” and that the partnership there did not create synergy. They had also shelved a planned expansion to Milan because of the war. Pronto, meanwhile, was looking for a new identity after Frenkel left for Ibiza, and the deal came together quickly with partner Victor Shmerich, who had been a longtime customer.
The chefs say they wanted to preserve the status of Pronto while replacing its old culinary language with their own. The menu is meant to sit between a bar and a brasserie, with small and medium plates such as bluefin tuna brioche, sea-fish sashimi with olive and pistachio salsa, calamari puttanesca, tagliata, pici pasta with pesto and kale, tortellini with caramelized leek and shiitake, corn anellotti with blue crab, and grouper risotto with spareribs and glazed beets. Gamlieli said a launch menu is only a test bed, adding that a restaurateur must be flexible and, in his words, “an accordion” that can shrink and expand quickly. He also said the goal is not to reinvent dishes, but to make a place people will want to return to several times a week, not once a year.
