Cena — Restaurant in Tel-Aviv

I really don't like writing bad reviews, but this was a huge disappointment 😓 being a fan of Santa Katarina and reading all about the special brick oven that Cena has, I had really high expectations...

Food was 3 stars at most ⭐⭐⭐ Come on, it's really hard to mess fresh dough that was just baked in the oven, right? Well it was OK, nothing more. Nothing like the Pizza that you would get at La Tigre or or Lila. We did want to try the Green Pizza, but they ran out of that Pizza?! so we had the Spicy Pizza, which was OK at most. The starter bread with Zaatar (Manaish) was OK too, but nothing to rave about. My favorite out of the dishes was the Spicy Tuna, which was tasty and had unique flavors. The Gnocchi was OK too. Unfortunately, we didn't like the Beef Saussage, as the sausage was dry and the grilled cabbage was missing any sort of flavor.

The service was just bad ⭐ We did come in relatively late (reserved a table to 2145) but were not expecting that many of the dishes on the menu would run out. Service was super slow and unprofessional, we had to wait for everything and basically try and find a waiter whenever we wanted something. It wasn't because the place was super packed, but rather because the staff seemed to "call it a day". The only positive thing that I could say about the service was 👉Roy👏, who seemed to be kind of the only person who cared about what was going on and tried to fix the situation. For some reason, the rest of the staff just didn't care...

Maybe it's because Cena was just recently opened, I do hope that both service and the food improve over time. For now, with all the amazing places that Tel Aviv has to offer, I would definitely wait before...

The food was great. Service, was disappointing, and I'm gentel. This is a pretty fancy place, we were the six people and paid over 2000 NIS for the table. It was a very important business dinner where I hosted client executives. And I wasn't happy with the experience.

It started with the fact we booked a table and we're sitted 25 minutes late! While the hostess kept saying to us it would just take a minute or two. When we asked for a menu to order drinks in the meantime, at first they said it wasn't possible, after explaining them it is pretty unreasonable to let us sit outside at the sidewalk for already 15 minutes and not offer a drink or let us order, they gave me a menu and said someone is coming to take our order. No one came to take our order even though I asked for that at least 3 times.

When we finally were sitted drinks took forever to come. All cocktails went out after over 20 minutes, and last came the coke I ordered, after over 30 minutessince we sat down and over 50 minutes of when we got to the place!!!.

It was very hard to get a hold of a waiter, and we were waiting for ever for some things. After waiting for the main dishes for a long time we went out to smoke and asked to be called in when the food is at the table. We went in after a while to discover that the food is already on the table getting cold.

The food was great as I described at first, but the service was awful.

At the end when I paid the bill I was told they will contact me. They tried to but I was in a meeting, asked them to call again a bit later, two weeks later and I'm...

The place is well decorated and got great service. Their wine list is pretty wide. We did discover a great bottle thanks to their sommelier. Lets talk about the important part. the food. Cena used to be run by a chef called Tomer, who I don’t like his food at all. so when I heard they changed to the chef that used to run Weiss (which I wanted to try), I knew I had to give it a try. Unfortunately, its was good but nothing better than good. Actually, many dishes were ok or worse. The Tartlet was nice but the fish tartare with smoked potato was tasteless. the beetroot with lamb was ok. tasted like beetroot kobe (just not as good as the kobe). the tortellini was horrible and extra salty (even the chef agreed). the Calamari confit was the best dish in my opinion but that was thanks to the corn bread which felt like a very sweet polenta cake with calamari. the only disappointment, was that the calamari was half grilled half fried. the fried ones worked better with the dish than the grilled ones. so I’d simply have only fried ones. we’ve had many other dishes including the “iconic” one, which is the shrimp on black tortilla. it was ok. out of two portions I’ve had a bite of one and it was more than enough (flavor wise, simply wasn’t special or anything to be honest). We’ve had all the desserts which were nice. to sum it all up, it was ok. not bad. but would prefer dining elsewhere. hopefully, they’ll build a more accurate...