During the summer it’s always hard to find people to cook and so we decided to go with a restaurant this month. The restaurant in question is Mojo’s, which is a new venture by the Maller family. Tzvi Maller has a number of restaurants under his belt – most recently Crave in Jerusalem and Nobo in Teaneck, but a number of others before that as well. Mojos though is the first time the Maller family has made it a true family affair without any other partners involved in the day-to-day operation. And the Mallers are involved in every area – both in the kitchen and front of house, augmented of course by a truly pleasant and professional staff. But the real star of the show is the food. As you can see from the menu, we sampled a wide variety of menu items. I cannot remember the last time where EVERY single items was a hit. Yes, there was a slight delay between the first 2 courses – but this is a brand new restaurant which received a glowing review the same day from the Times of Israel – and so was literally packed from the time we got there until shortly before closing. Other than that delay, the food came out like clockwork and, as mentioned, was very tasty. It is hard to even choose a favorite dish – really they were all good – from the opening Caesar salad through the appetizers like the spaetzelle (reminiscent of a similar dish I remember from Nobo in Teaneck) and the Wagyu slider through their signature meat pizzas. They were all incredible (REALLY!) and pictures can be found below. But as effusive as I am about our experience, this is a wine blog after all, and it was pretty much a hit there as well. Yes there were two wines that were misses as far as I am concerned – but everything else was really great – and that’s a VERY good percentage. The only real downer is that when we taste in restaurants, its often very difficult to get a read on the nose in a way accurate enough to write notes, as you are in close quarters with other diners, and, in this case, there were aromas of lamb bacon and sausage that were wafting through the restaurant. But other than that, all in all, a pretty exceptional night. On top of that, right across the street from the restaurant on one of the security grates we noticed graffiti with the word “RCC” in plain sight. We then saw it again on random street signs. Clearly a sign that that Mojo’s is certainly an RCC-worthy choice to dine.

Anyhow, here are my notes on the wines (minus the nose):