{"id":35374,"date":"2026-07-26T12:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/35374\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:14:07","slug":"portofino-restaurant-brings-a-taste-of-italy-to-modiin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/35374\/","title":{"rendered":"Portofino restaurant brings a taste of Italy to Modi’in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Portofino is a large Italian trattoria in the Ishpro Center of Modi\u2019in<\/a> that offers a wide variety of pastas, pizzas and salads at reasonable prices. The vibe is casual and fun. On a recent evening, we saw four family groups with balloons tied to one of the chairs celebrating birthdays. Other tables held groups of girlfriends, or couples having a date night.<\/p>\n

Our server Assaf was friendly and knew the menu well. Although we heard quite a bit of English around us, the menu is only in Hebrew. We started with cocktails which were good, although I wouldn\u2019t have minded a little more alcohol. I had the lychee house (NIS 49) which had rum and lychee syrup and my favorite husband had the Portofino (NIS 49) which had tequila and orange flavors. I preferred his cocktail.<\/p>\n

For appetizers, we ordered focaccia with mushrooms, and arancini. I\u2019ve never met an arancini I didn\u2019t like, and this was no exception. It was four balls of fried risotto on a rose sauce. Unlike some restaurants where the arancini are huge, these were about the size of golf balls which I actually prefer as I think it\u2019s a better ratio of rice to sauce.<\/p>\n

The focaccia had a lot of fresh mushrooms and parmesan cheese and was excellent. Assaf brought over a second focaccia with dips in what was to become a theme of the night. We ordered something and Assaf brough over extra.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just really want you to taste this,\u201d he kept saying.<\/p>\n

For the main course, we ordered one fish dish and one pasta. The fish dish, (NIS 135) was a filet of sea bream (denis) seared on the plancha and served on a bed of gnocchi was very well-prepared. The gnocchi are made in-house, while the rest of the pasta is delivered fresh. We also ordered the pappardelle don Mario (NIS 76) with tomato sauce, pesto and cream and dollops of mascarpone cheese.<\/p>\n

All of the portions are quite large and it was fun to share the dishes.<\/p>\n

It is basically a crime against humanity not to order dessert at a dairy restaurant. We chose to share one \u2013 the tiramisu and it was good. But the star of the show was a pannacotta that Assaf added saying, \u201cWe really want you to taste this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, the food at Portofino was very good and the overall vibe and experience made it even better.<\/p>\n

Portofino
Ishpro Center Modiin
Hours: Sunday-Wednesday 12:00 \u2013 22:30, Thursday 12:00 \u2013 23:30, Friday 8:45 \u2013 14:00, Saturday opens an hour after Shabbat ends
Kashrut: Rabbanut Modi’in<\/p>\n

The writer was a guest of the restaurant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portofino is a large Italian trattoria in the Ishpro Center of Modi\u2019in that offers a wide variety of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23822,4809,5,23823,2585,1003],"class_list":["post-35374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-food-review","tag-italian-cuisine","tag-italy","tag-modiin","tag-pasta","tag-restaurant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}