I’m from New York, so I grew up eating bagels and lox almost every Sunday morning. So did Valerie Sarfati, who made aliyah from Montreal via Monsey, although she called it smoked salmon.
“I’m Canadian and we always had smoked salmon on our table,” she told me. “But when I came to Israel, I couldn’t find good smoked salmon and I was sure there were others like me.”
She was surprised to find that many native Israelis had never tried smoked salmon and enjoys introducing them to the pleasures of smoked fish. When she came here, she couldn’t find good smoked salmon in Israel, so her father became her supplier. She knew a lot of immigrants in Israel who were bringing smoked salmon from London, the US, and Canada.
After raising and marrying off six kids, she decided to make her own smoked salmon, but wasn’t happy with the results. So she traveled back to Montreal to learn the secrets of smoked fish.
She started curing and smoking fish in her kitchen and selling it online in 2015. As her business expanded, in 2022 she opened a factory in Modi’in’s Shilat Industrial Zone to make her products. Now her son Yakov has taken over the production, leaving her free to deal with marketing her product.
The factory is open all week and there is a small café attached where you can order a sandwich or a plate of smoked fish. If you find yourself in the area on a Friday, they offer free tasting of all of their products.
Sampling smoked salmon
I was not able to make it to the factory, so Valerie offered to send me a sampling of their products. I was joined in my tasting by two fellow feinshmekers – my friends Michael Potter, who first introduced me to Valerie’s smoked salmon, and Laura Cornfield, a maven of all things smoked.
All of the fish is smoked and cut by hand, and the paper-thin slices of smoked salmon (NIS 79 for 200 gr.) are delicate and perfect. The fish literally melts in your mouth.
“I’ve had smoked salmon all over the world and I think this is the best I’ve ever tasted,” Michael said.
“It’s amazing – the taste, the smoke, I just love it,” Laura added.
We also tasted the hot-smoked sea bream, a whole fish that was lightly smoked and juicy, as well as the smoked halibut, smoked tuna, and a piece of salmon that had been smoked whole. It was all delicious.
Sarfati’s smoked salmon is not cheap, about double the price of supermarket smoked salmon. But the adage “you get what you pay for” does seem to apply here.
“It’s like you can buy a bottle of wine for NIS 20 or for NIS 400,” Valerie said. “There are different qualities of smoked salmon and I think Israelis have learned to appreciate good food.”Kashrut: Badatz/Eidah Haredit.
- Sarfati Premium Smokehouse
- Gilboa 2
- Shilat Industrial Zone, Modi’in
- Hours: Sunday-Tuesday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday, 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday, 8 a.m.- 2 p.m.
- To order online: www.sarfati.co.il