Celebrity Chef Avi Biton Opens Upscale Club Marine Restaurant in Herzliya Marina
Avi Biton, a prominent Israeli chef and television personality, has launched a new restaurant called Club Marine at the Herzliya Marina, marking his first major venture outside Tel Aviv. The restaurant boasts a prime waterfront location directly facing the yacht docks, adjacent to the De Yacht Hotel. The venue is designed to evoke the charm of French and Italian Riviera coastal towns, featuring a spacious layout with outdoor lounge seating by the water, peripheral seating areas overlooking the marina and road, and an intimate indoor space with about 30 seats, a bar, and an open kitchen window.
Club Marine aims to offer a high-end dining experience with a Mediterranean-inspired menu that balances creativity and accessibility. The dishes are crafted to appeal broadly without being overly avant-garde. Highlights include a crispy Margherita pizza with fresh tomato sauce and mozzarella, a creative Caesar cucumber salad replacing lettuce with crunchy cucumber slices, and a well-executed roast beef dish served with grilled lettuce. The sea bass ceviche was praised for its freshness and delicate flavors, while the panzanella salad was noted as somewhat lacking in the expected contrasts of bread and tomato acidity.
For main courses, the bouillabaisse with white fish was cooked perfectly but lacked the rich, intense flavors typical of the dish, and the accompanying pasta was slightly overcooked. Despite some inconsistencies in the hot dishes, the restaurant is seen as a welcome and stylish addition to Herzliya Marina, offering excellent ingredients, inventive cold plates, and a stunning seaside setting. With further refinement of the warm dishes and cooking times, Club Marine has the potential to become a top dining destination by the yachts.
Biton’s extensive culinary background includes iconic Tel Aviv establishments such as Adora, Poplar group branches, Hadler, and Solika delicatessens, alongside his TV roles as a cooking show host and MasterChef VIP judge. Club Marine represents his ambition to elevate the Herzliya Marina’s dining scene with a sophisticated, vacation-like atmosphere and a menu that resonates with Israeli tastes.
