TEL AVIV
Food and Travel
In the beginning, God created..the Israeli salad. Ubiquitous and iconic, the diced tomato and cucumber salad is eaten at practically every meal, even breakfast especially breakfast! It may be a curious culinary distinction, but the Israeli salad in its myriad, inventive forms has become an art form, indeed a thing of beauty. Fresh, vibrant, tasting of health and sunshine, with an abundance of ingredients that never travel more than a few hours to market, they are a symbol of how far the tiny, multi-faceted country, the size of Wales, has come since it was founded sixty years ago this month.
Janna Gur, author of The Book of New Israeli Food argues, however, it is still too early in the countrys history for there to be such a thing as an Israeli cuisine, although she identifies a national preference for vivid flavours, bold spicing, grilled meat and fish, fresh vegetables and salads and big portions. It reflects the philosophy of Daniel Zach, whose elegant Carmella Bistro, housed in a restored Ottoman mansion near the Carmel Market, is a calm oasis of civilized eating. The one thing he cannot take off the market-fresh menu is the herb salad: finely-chopped parsley, rocket, mint and coriander with a scattering of roasted cashews in lemon and olive oil. Amidst all the dazzling pyrotechnics of contemporary Tel Aviv dining, it is deceptively simple in the way only truly sophisticated food can be, almost Biblical in its classical essence.
Tel Aviv now boasts a food culture to equal any other great metropolis, but the early immigrants arriving from all over the world to seek freedom in their historic homeland were more concerned with eating for survival than gourmet pleasure. Struggling to build their promised land, the kibbutz pioneers would rise early to work the fields and return to breakfast on home-produced cheese, yoghurt, fruit and salads, the precursor of todays vast hotel buffets. For years, it was the best meal a visitor to Israel could hope for. As Kissinger reputedly remarked, Why cant a country with two and a half million Jewish mothers have better food?
Todays Jewish mothers, however, are more likely to be making reservations than hot dinners in a high-voltage city that takes its cue more from New York than Paris or London. The fast-moving restaurant scene has been driven in no small part by the improved security situation of the last five years, along with superb agricultural produce, increasing affluence and the latest global food trends. Pan-Asian food is hugely popular, from sushi street stalls to Zepras fabulous setting and glossy, clever dishes, while at the coolly elegant Catit, in a restored 1930s hotel, Meir Adoni flirts with molecular concepts in dishes wreathed in dry ice or warmed by hot pebbles. Over at uber-stylish Messa, the citys movers and shakers are discreetly catered for with a cuisine as polished as stones in the Diamond Exchange.
The current generation of well-traveled, young chefs is handsome, ambitious and talented, and they have made cooking sexy and fashionable. Unfettered by convention, their style is free-wheeling, based on the daily market, native ingredients and also their own diverse ethnic backgrounds. With centuries of inspiration to draw upon, ancient foods such as zaatar (hyssop), date syrup, barley, wheat, grapes, olives, labne cheese and sesame seeds have been given a revelatory 21st century makeover. It goes way beyond milk and honey.
Rafi Cohen at the suave, seafront Raphael restaurant offers dishes with a refined French flourish that owe a debt to his legendary Moroccan grandmother. This multicultural mosaic is evident in Carmellas aged beef and grilled onion on eggplant and tahini puree; theres goose liver baklava or ossobuco a la Ras al-Hanut at the charming Adora bistro; and calarmari on goats milk yoghurt or honey and saffron ice cream in kataif pastry at Nir Zuks funky and iconoclastic Cordelia restaurant in Jaffa where the maverick young entrepreneur is experimenting with local ingredients such as fig leaves and uses cheese, olive oil, beef, lamb, fruit and vegetables from his family farm.
Tel Aviv has been in the vanguard of style since the early 20th century when Patrick Geddes planned a unique garden city and German-Jewish architects built beautiful white buildings in the latest Bauhaus design. With over 1,000 remaining, the centre of Tel Aviv has been listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. Its a backdrop for a dynamic hothouse of artistic creativity, in food as much as fashion, architecture, dance, music, film and visual art. Restaurants are hip, stylish and design-driven. The energy is fueled by a population that is outgoing, high achieving, quickly bored and self-consciously avant-guard. Perhaps it also derives from a battle-weary determination to make the most of each day as it comes. No one needs reminding that life in their Middle Eastern neighborhood is tough and tense. It makes for a complicated mix.
An interest in eating is hard-wired into the Jewish DNA, but the genesis of the country is also written in the faces of its people. There are a million stories to be told amongst the crowds who parade along the boulevards and scalloped beachfront promenades in a crazy cavalcade: chic Parisians in white linen; lycra-clad Californian cyclists; sad-eyed Russian violinists playing Bach; groups of Arab women each with their mobile phone clutched to their head-scarf; artists with tie-died hair and clothes; teenage clubbers; hasidic Jews with black hats and white beards on bicycles; lovers, beach-combers, joggers, dog-walkers, chess-players, volley-ballers, petitioners, protestors, pilgrims, clowns on stilts, an elderly man dressed in a gold lame cowboy outfit and someone who has made a life-style choice to dress as a yellow chicken.
The tales of Tel Aviv are also reflected in its colourful, melting pot kitchens. The ever-popular Libyan Dr Shakshouka in the Jaffa flea market epitomizes the national fondness for the spicy egg and tomato dish after which the atmospheric restaurant is named. There are homespun Ethiopian cafes as well as Georgian grills, Spanish tapas bars, fresh pasta shops and SoHo-style bistros that serve wonderful brunch. This little packed world on a plate is also reflected in shops, supermarkets and markets such as the hectic Carmel market, a delirious display of Bukharan pasties, Druze flatbreads, Turkish bourekas, spicy Yemenite sauces, electric-pink pickled turnips, snake-like leeks, billiard-ball radishes grown with Viagra!, flat Arab cabbages for stuffing and rolling, nests of green beans as tangled as the politics, Mejdool dates and cherry tomatoes - Israels gift to the world.
On Levinsky Street, Greeks sell tarama, spices and homemade rosewater, Russians have cornered the trade in sweets and cakes and Persians preside over mountains of nuts and raisins. Today these brimming, souk-like shops, blessed by pictures of holy men and religious amulets, are joined by smart fromageries, chocolate boutiques, fresh juice stands, gourmet ice cream (try the kumquat or poppy seed flavours from Dr Lek), and Pri Hagafen, a faux-rustic Israeli wine shop, and showcase of the industry founded by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in the 19th century, that proves just why Robert Parker recently confirmed their world-class quality. Its a far cry from the days when the first request from British immigrants to visiting relatives was for jars of Marmite.
Tel Aviv street food is equally eclectic, from Itsik and Ruthies minute, 50 year-old sandwich bar on Sheinkin Street that opens at 5.30am and closes when the food runs out, to shawarma and Tunisian baguette stalls with their technicoloured arrays of salads, pickles, and sauces. And theres now an organic falafel bar. Humus, which has become almost a religion, is common to both Arab and Israeli food cultures, claimed, disputed and adored by both sides. It is arguable (and they do!) it is at its creamy, spicy finest at Abu Hassan, run by an old Jaffa Arab family.
Café culture is also a dominant theme of city life. The habit was formed by the arrival of Middle European Jews who brought with them a fondness for coffee, cakes and conversation. Quality is appreciated and competition fierce; Tel Avivians boast how Starbucks failed here. Every one has a favourite café where they hang out and work on their laptops. On trendy Sheinkin, for example, Orna & Ella is said to have the best cakes and cutest waiters; Tika combines coffee with hairdressing; Siach roast their own coffee; and Café Tamar is a peacenik shrine to assassinated prime minister Rabin, still run by 83 year-old Sarah since 1941 and an unchanged, ramshackle home-from-home for artists, musicians and anyone else in need of a comforting bowl of soup and dumplings.
In secular Tel Aviv, Israeli food does not necessarily mean kosher food. Shellfish and pork are widely available, and kosher restaurants, where food is prepared according to Jewish dietary rules and thus unable to open on busy Friday nights, are in the minority, unlike the more religious city of Jerusalem. Once kosher was synonymous with chicken soup and unceremonious service, but at Deka, for example, an ultra-modern design exercise in concrete fretwork, Yaniv Kaspi cooks memorable kosher fish dishes that subtly draw on southern European and middle eastern idioms. For him the emphasis is on the integrity and freshness of the food, not the ritual.
Another outstanding kosher restaurant, Lilith, is also inspired by wider ideals, providing training for disadvantaged young people from all backgrounds Jewish, Muslim and Christian. Social and political awareness is also on the menu at the inspirational, award-winning Yafa Café in Jaffa, which offers good coffee, books in Arabic and Hebrew, and a few Palestinian dishes by the joint Israeli and Arab owners. In Israel, everything is connected to peace, even the food.
This sprawling and noisy, dun-coloured city punctuated by high-rise towers, parks and striking stone and glass public buildings cannot claim to be the most beautiful in the world, but its getting a facelift. The bohemian Neve Tzedek district, founded in 1887 by Aharon Shlush, for example, is blossoming as the newly-restored old villas sell for millions of dollars. Tel Aviv, which celebrates its civic centenary next year, has a character all its own, with a Mediterranean hedonism and a Levantine bustle, European sophistication, high-tech prosperity and a whiff of Middle Eastern chaos you either love or hate but can never ignore.
The people here work and play hard. Life is for living. The street action is round the clock and anything goes. At dusk, the Jaffa-orange sun tumbles as rapidly as a slot machine coin into the darkening sea, and the sky is the colour of aubergines and pomegranates, watermelon and Sharon fruit. The streetlights soften the hard outlines of this ever-challenging, always stimulating city. Shalom from Tel Aviv.
Back to Home page
