Mul Yam

Mul Yam occupied Hangar 24 at the Tel Aviv Port, with a dining room overlooking the sea.[1] The restaurant positioned itself in a distinct luxury-dining niche, concentrating on high-quality and rare fish and seafood rather than the more casual or trend-driven offerings that characterized much of Tel Aviv's restaurant scene.[2] Its dining room was a venue where senior officials brought honored guests, and dinner there was described as among the most expensive meals available in Israel, though a business lunch offered a more accessible entry point.[1]

The menu included shellfish, and the restaurant was not kosher.[1] Chef Yoram Nitzan designed the menu from the restaurant's earliest years, varying versions of classic dishes every two or three months while keeping the focus squarely on fish and seafood rather than more commonplace preparations.[2] A noted signature dessert — a thin red sugar shell with edible gold, filled with pistachio cream and cherries and styled after a Fabergé egg — was among the restaurant's distinctive offerings.[1]

Shalom Makhrovsky established Mul Yam in 1995, a year after founding the seafood-import company Ma'adanei Yam.[2] A regulatory change connected to meat import rules had opened the door to seafood imports; Makhrovsky identified the opportunity, built the import business, and then opened the restaurant as a showcase for the ingredients he was bringing in.[2] The restaurant's first chef was Yonatan Roshfeld, who departed within less than a year; Yoram Nitzan then took over the kitchen and remained its guiding culinary figure throughout the restaurant's life.[3]

Imported ingredients were central to Mul Yam's identity from the outset. Makhrovsky described them as the restaurant's backbone, with sourcing spanning oysters, Canadian lobsters, turbot, and langoustines, alongside Mediterranean fish and specialty items such as Italian mushrooms.[2][1] Weekly specials reflected the availability of fresh arrivals, giving the menu a rhythm tied directly to what had just come in from abroad.[1] By the time of the restaurant's twentieth anniversary, Mul Yam was importing exclusively for its own use.[2]

In 2003, Mul Yam was admitted to Les Grandes Tables du Monde, a French guide listing 140 elite restaurants worldwide.[2] It was the first restaurant in Israel and the Middle East to appear on that list.[2]

In 2015, Mul Yam was among four Israeli restaurants included in the inaugural La Liste, France's aggregated ranking of 1,000 restaurants drawn from more than 200 food guides in 92 countries as well as crowd-sourced review platforms.[4] The restaurant also published a seafood cookbook and guide titled "Sifoodpedia" in 2012, developed under Nitzan's leadership, which received an international cookbook award in 2013 — described by Globes as the equivalent of an "Oscar" for cookbooks.[2]

At approximately 2 a.m. on July 23, 2015, a fire broke out at Mul Yam inside Hangar 24 at the Tel Aviv Port.[3] Eight firefighting squads responded; the blaze was centered in the gallery area and beneath the ceiling, and firefighters brought it under control by approximately 4:45 a.m.[3][5] Ynet reported that Hangar 24 burned completely, while The Times of Israel described heavy damage to the structure; no one was injured.[6][5] A subsequent investigation identified an electrical failure in a refrigerator in the restaurant kitchen as the cause.[6]

The restaurant's wine collection — approximately one thousand bottles valued at nearly half a million shekels — was among the casualties: about half the bottles were destroyed or opened by the fire.[7] Makhrovsky described the restaurant as a profitable twenty-year enterprise that had been "running at 200 km/h" before the fire brought it to an abrupt halt.[7] He estimated the owners' restoration costs at roughly three million shekels, not counting work on the building itself by the port authority.[7]

In the immediate aftermath, Makhrovsky anticipated reopening after restoration.[7] Four months later, in November 2015, he announced that Mul Yam would not reopen. In his statement, he said that months of work on the complicated restoration had shifted his perspective and that he had decided to pursue different business challenges.[8] He credited the restaurant with consistently delivering high-standard fine dining to tens of thousands of customers over twenty years and singled out chef Yoram Nitzan for his role in leading the kitchen.[8] The former Mul Yam space remained empty and visibly fire-damaged for five years after the blaze.[9]

In 2020, chefs Yoram Nitzan and Kobi Bachar brought Mul Yam back as a temporary pop-up at Pastel in Tel Aviv, recreating signature dishes alongside desserts by the restaurant's original pastry chef, Tal Hanig.[10] Dishes offered included oysters, crab cappuccino, scallop-and-shrimp ravioli, and the Fabergé egg dessert that had defined the restaurant's style.[10] Originally planned as a two-day event, the pop-up was expanded to four evenings, August 9–12, after strong customer demand.[10]

Nitzan described Mul Yam as "much more than a restaurant" and "a cultural icon," recalling that it had weathered difficult periods including an intifada, and that Makhrovsky had once organized an "End of the World" meal that filled the restaurant within an hour.[11] In 2020, Hangar 24 and the neighboring former restaurant Gilliz were renovated and combined into a single space that was leased to an international French patisserie chain, marking the definitive end of the original restaurant's presence at the port.[9]