This was the first year I decided to give up leavened foods for Passover.  Before you proclaim how proud you are of me, I should warn you, that throughout the holiday, I did keep up with my consumption of bacon and shell fish.  Shame on me.  Please don’t judge.

Regardless, giving up bread, pasta, and baked goods wasn’t as hard as I thought it would.  I might’ve also lost a pound or two, which was definitely a bonus.  And I also discovered the beauty of matzo sandwiches.

When it was time to return to bread, what could be a better option than bagels?  Enter Josh Furman, the man behind fabulous events hosted by Jconnect.  On April 26th (I’m slightly behind in my recap), JConnect boys and girls, and bagel lovers united at Eltana to nosh, mingle, and learn about the bagel making process.

Inside the Restaurant
On the menu
Bagel, anyone?

Before I got to try out the bagel, I got the tour of the kitchen, learned about the bagel making process and discovered what makes Eltana bagels different from the competition.

Etlana serves up Montreal Style Bagels in a Sephardic style.  The bagels are hand rolled for 2-4 minutes and then are boiled in honey water.  They are seeded on both sides and then finished in the wood fired oven (they use apple or cherry wood).  The Montreal style bagels are sweeter in flavor because the dough has sugar, which traditional bagels don’t have.

Ingredients to make Bagels
Bagels’ Accessories: Poppy & Sesame Seeds
The bagel making process: mixing, boiling, baking in a very hot wood-fired oven.
  
Rolling the bagels! 

And then, we got to eat!
Red Pepper & Walnut Spread
Caramelized Onion Hummus
Flat Bread
One word: delicious!  I wanted to stand there and keep on eating the spreads.  The red pepper & walnut spread was my favorite.  And the bread was definitely worth the wait.
Cauliflower Tahini Salad
Spiced Sweet Potato Salad
I hope you all know how obsessed I am about sweet potatoes.  Skip the sweet potato pie and go straight for the savory version with lots of spices, cilantro, and lime.  The Eltana version came close – it was nice and spicy.  I loved that they used the traditional orange and the less common yellow varieties of sweet potatoes.
With the cauliflower tahini salad, I wish the dressing wasn’t as overwhelming.  I like the mild flavor of cauliflower, and unfortunately it got covered up by the tahini dressing.
Potato Tart with Wild Yukon Gold Potatoes and Winter Greens
I wish I had one of these bites right now.  They would be perfect hot, straight out of the oven, at room temperature, or even cold, perhaps with a side of sour cream.  Similar to the Spanish Potato Tortilla, I like the fact that Eltana added greens to this version.

By the time dessert arrived, I was pretty full.  There might’ve been a few second helpings of flat bread and bagels.  But I wanted to give Tahini cookies a try.

Tahini Cookies

The cookies reminded me of halva.  Very strong in sesame flavor.  Sweet and dense.  I wish I had a cup of coffee or tea to go along with these cookies.

Visit Eltana:
1538 12th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122


Sunday to Wednesday 6am-4pm
Thursday to Saturday 6am-10pm


More info from the website: Eltana was created by Stephen Brown and Daniel Levin, to make a deliciously different, hand-rolled bagel — and to bring it directly to you with flair, warmth and soul.

We love the food we make. Not just the bagels and flatbreads hot out of the wood-fired hearth, but the simple and memorable street food from the Eastern Mediterranean that we serve to accompany our breads.

Pick up a bag of bagels on your way out.



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