Hanamal 24

Hanamal 24 sits inside a restored warehouse on Ha'namal Street in Haifa's Port District, the formerly-industrial waterfront that over the past decade has become the centre of the city's fine-dining scene. Chef-owner Ran Rosh trained at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon — the most rigorous chef school in France — and opened Hanamal 24 in 2009 with a concept unusual for Israel at the time: a serious Italian-French-Mediterranean tasting kitchen with a Tuscan-villa interior and a wine cellar built for ageing.

The restaurant is designed as a Tuscan piazza, with a main room that opens onto several private dining areas: a romantic table for two in a brick-vaulted alcove, the wine cellar itself (used for private dinners of six to eight), and a dedicated meeting room that handles corporate bookings at twelve to sixteen covers. Each space has its own lighting and acoustic character, and the restaurant's floor management will assign diners according to the occasion of the booking.

The cooking is precise Franco-Italian with a Mediterranean inflection. Signatures include a lamb-ragout tortellini — house-made pasta, slow-cooked lamb neck, pecorino foam — and a rosemary gnocchi plated with brown butter and sage. The French classics are represented too: a proper canard à l'orange, a côte de boeuf for two, and a selection of terrines served with house preserves. The wine list is one of the deepest in Israel, with strong Bordeaux, Piedmont, and Tuscany sections alongside boutique Israeli producers from the Galilee.

Service is a trained European brigade — captain, server, sommelier, busser — and the pacing is calibrated for a three-hour evening. The pricing sits above most Haifa restaurants but below comparable Tel Aviv rooms; the per-head for a three-course dinner with wine lands around ₪400–500, or ₪600–750 for the tasting menu with pairings. For a visiting client or a serious business occasion, this is the definitive Haifa choice.

Haifa is not Tel Aviv. The city's business culture is more low-key, more understated, and more willing to take a guest to a proper restaurant than to chase the latest Rothschild Boulevard concept. Hanamal 24 delivers exactly the kind of room Haifa business requires: credible internationally (the Paul Bocuse pedigree registers), credible locally (Ran Rosh is a known quantity in Israeli fine dining), and structurally designed for the occasion (private rooms, proper wine programme, trained brigade). Book the wine-cellar room for a party of six to eight, agree a set menu with the sommelier in advance, and let the kitchen handle the rest.