The creative combination of a fully sketched 2-dimensional background and Italian food, yields a perfectly Instagram-able culinary experience that is hard to refuse.
Sketch, which recently opened at the Haifa Sammy Ofer soccer arena, is covered in black and white comic art from floor to ceiling, creating a captivating optical illusion, the first of its kind in Israel.
Local artists labored for some six months, using up thousands of black markers in order to bring this vision to life.
Sketch cafe
(Photo: Tal Shimoni)
"The whole world here is flat," said Shuki Moas, one of the café owners. "If there is a light bulb in the bathroom, the light bulb is drawn on. Everything you see in this café- everything is drawn with marker. We went through all the markers in Israel," he says.
"This process was not easy and it took a few tries until we understood how to do it right," says Tamir Elhiani, the designer and artist. "The experience of entering a drawing, when everything is deprived of color and is in black and white - you automatically feel a departure from reality and you throw yourself into a feeling of being inside a drawing."
The two entrepreneurs were initially inspired when they stumbled upon a 2-dimensional café in Dubai, called the "Forever Rose Café." They loved the idea and decided to bring it back to Israel with them, and could not think of any better location than Haifa - their hometown.
Sketch has two floors - the first floor is designed as an Italian restaurant, which seems to have large windows looking out at an Italian streets.
The second floor, is a gallery which resembles an airport terminal complete with a screen for arriving and and departing flights, escalators, and seating inside what feels like a real plane complete with an overhead luggage compartment.
"There are real El-Al seats here that we upholstered in white with a black contour and people have the experience of being onboard an airplane," the owners say. "Everyone who comes here, is in awe and takes pictures."
The only thing that is not black and white, is the food. The menu offers the classics of the Italian cuisine - Roman pizza with polenta, panzanella and artichoke salad with mozzarella cheese, pastas, and fresh handmade ice cream for dessert.