The Romano House and the City at Night
Romano occupies the second floor of the Romano House, a mid-19th century building on Derech Jaffa whose ground-level passage operates during the day as a lively merchants' area and transforms at night into the approach to one of the more distinctive restaurant spaces in Tel Aviv. Eyal Shani and Shahar Segal opened Romano in summer 2015 as a restaurant-bar-lounge: not one thing but a configuration of things, deliberately refusing the categories that make dining predictable. The room is sprawling and multi-levelled. The energy on a Friday evening is the kind of energy that Tel Aviv specialises in — genuinely festive without being forced.
The menu is recognisably Shani's: local Mediterranean ingredients, handled with precision and shaped by what the market offered that morning. The tuna sashimi with local citrus has accumulated the kind of reputation that requires repeat visits to confirm. The white fish crudo, dressed simply and served cold, is the other standard-bearer. Dishes arrive without formal sequencing, which is either liberating or mildly chaotic depending on your dining temperament. Either way, the food is excellent and the portions are built for sharing, which generates exactly the social atmosphere that Romano is designed to produce.
The building's history is part of the atmosphere rather than a design affectation. The stone walls, the double-height passage below, the architectural proportions of a building built when this was a different city in a different era — these textures give Romano a context that newer restaurants cannot manufacture. Walking through the passage before ascending to the restaurant is a ritual with no equivalent in the city's dining landscape.
Romano sits close to Florentin, the neighbourhood that absorbed Tel Aviv's creative energy in the 1990s and has retained enough of its character to remain interesting. The walk from Port Said on Allenby to Romano is one of the better pre-dinner routes in south Tel Aviv, past architecture and street art and the last remnants of a city that existed before the tech industry arrived.
Best for a Birthday Dinner
Romano makes birthdays feel properly celebrated without requiring anyone to arrange party decorations or negotiated menus. The building is dramatic enough to feel like an occasion. The kitchen sends food in waves — a format that extends the meal rather than concluding it — which means a birthday table has reason to stay for hours. The wine list is long and intelligently assembled. For groups of eight or more, the room has configurations that create a private-dining effect without requiring a separate room. If the guest of honour wants to feel that a significant amount of care went into selecting the venue, Romano delivers that signal effortlessly.