Tel Aviv Restaurants

This is it -- the end of three months of living the Zionist dream here in Tel Aviv. I haven't quite been farming the fruits of the Jewish earth, but I have been doing my share of consuming them. It took me a while to understand the swing of the culinary scene, but once I did food and eating have managed to reassert themselves as my primary hobbies.

Tel Aviv is very much a city for eating-out. The city is packed with restaurants and cafes, and a good number of those are packed with beautiful people enjoying themselves and their company. The Mediterranean climate and a strong agrarian tradition ensure quality ingredients, and these are often served in largely unadulterated fashion. A wide range of cusiines is available, reflecting Israeli's multiculturalism and wide-ranging travel tastes. Yet, I've found that the food here degrades rapidly with distance from its origin -- Middle Eastern food is absolutely first-rate. Italian is good, French decent. Anything even remotely Mexican or Asian is usually awful (with one or two exceptions).

Service is efficient if not friendly, although there is a bizarre pattern of waiters absolutely disappearing when it comes time to ask for the check. The décor also follows Israeli culture in being, um, rather bold, but there are many cozy spots nonetheless.

Every meal I've eaten over the last three months has been in one sort of restaurant or another, and as such I've managed to develop a few favourites into solid recommendations.

MIDDLE EASTERN

Shemesh. For the best shawarma you can get anywhere, head to Shemesh in Ramat Gan. I wrote a whole blog post on this, so won't expand here.

Abu Hassan. Similarly, you would be remiss to leave Israel without having a good Hummus meal. Personally, I think that the best hummus is at a local spot near my office in Ra'anana, but most people can't be expected to schlep out there. Settle instead for Abu Hassan, an institution of a restaurant whose deserved popularity has caused it to spill out of two storefronts already. Go early because they run out of hummus by lunchtime. 1 Dolphin St, Jaffo (03) 682-0387

 

MEDITERRANEAN

This is where Tel Aviv does best in terms of variety, class and content. As it turns out, all of the restaurants I heartily recommend here are in the Neve Tzedek/Avenue Rothschild area, which happens to be my favorite part of town. This is because all of these restaurants were recommended to me by a man I happened to have met one night in Champa, a bar in the heart of this neighborhood. We talked about how awesome the bar we were in was, establishing his good taste, and so I went on to ask for the other places he liked and frequented. He said that he didn't venture far, but it didn't matter since all the best places were nearby anyway. I trusted, and I verified.

Champa. An "authentic" Spanish Tapas bar with imposing looking legs of ham and coils of sausage hanging from the walls. I don't think anyone from Spain would recognize this as anything remotely spanish, but they do serve Cava, and most of the ham is important from Catalonia, and both are very good. It's a bar, but you can certainly piece together a light meal from what they offer.

Cava is actually the only drink on offer, and the staff does a fine job of upselling to bottles, "the same price as three glasses!" This leads to a rather convivial atmosphere, which as the evening presses on often spills out into the street. The location, and the corner of Nachlat Binyamin and Avenue Rothschild could not be better. Rehov Nahalat Binyamin 52; 077-200-8636

 

Radio Rosco. Just down the street from Champa, my favourite restaurant in Tel Aviv is a casual italian joint, serving what must be the best pizzas this side of Naples. I think it's supposed to be inspired by Italian-American cuisine, but they must have screwed up since there are very, very few Italian restaurants back home that are this good. I've been back four times. Don't worry, I have verified that they only use kosher pork.

The atmosphere is warm and inviting, overcoming the rather bizarre location in the small inner courtyard of a low-rise apartment buildinng. Tables fill the empy space inside the building and occupy a proper indoor space adjacent. You enter through the opening of a Spanish-language Bookshop, so its easy to miss.97 Allenbi St (03) 5600334

 

NG. A fine modern addition to the Jewish tradition of "meat" restaurants (dating from the days when laws of Kashrut forced jews to choose between meat and dairy if they wanted to open a restaurant). The rest of the world would think of this as a steakhouse. It's in a comfortable old house in the heart of the old neighborhood of Neve Tzedek. Service here is actually quite friendly, for a change.

There's not much to the menu, just a few appetizers and a few cuts of steak (porterhouse, fillet, etc). The steaks are good, and seriously prepared. You can't choose your level of "done-ness", but they come out a solid medium (as they should be). If anyone reading this goes to NG, you HAVE to order the eggplant appetizer. In a country which eats a lot of eggplant, this dish is divine. 6 Ehad Ha'am St. (just above Tazza D'oro) (03) 5167888

ETHIOPIAN

Ethiopian. Yes, the name of the restaurant is the same as the name of the genre. Something like 100,000 Ethiopians have immigrated here in the last 20 years, taking advantage of their birthrights as Jews. They haven't assimilated that well, which is bad for their standard of living certainly, but a good thing for the cuisine. This place is an unassuming restaurant on the sea-ward end of Allenby street. Décor is basic, service is in Hebrew or Amharic only, but the food is top-notch.

INDIAN

Tandoori. This small chain of Indian restaurants is run by an Iraqi-Jewish-Indian family and produces very passable South Asian food. I lived on their Dal Bhat (Lentils and rice) for a week when my stomach would accept little else. The kebabs are great too. There are also about 100,000 Indians jews living here in Israel, but their relative economic success has sadly limited their proclivity to run restaurnats. The only other game in town is Indira, which is owned by Romanians now and is awful. Herzliya, 32 St.Maskit 099546702

ASIAN

Sometimes you crave Asian food it happens to most people, and it happens to me quite a lot. Sadly, there's not much in Tel Aviv to hit this spot. I wasn't able to find even a truly decent Thai place, which was surprising given the number of Thais living in Israel and Israelis, living it up in Thailand.

Thus, the only two Asian places I can truly recommend in Tel Aviv are as follows:

Onami. On the popular Rehov Ha'arb'a, seated among the many trendy restaurants, is this highly polished Japanese spot. A large dining bar surrounds a sushi kitchen where friendly Thai chefs joke among themselves as they skilfully slice and dice fish and vegetables alike. Hipster music is piped in (Kinds of Convenience in a japanese restaurant? Ok…), and the crowd is young and affluent, if not sophisticated. Waitstaff are the usual surly Israeli women, though they appear to speak English well. Food was at about the level of a decent New York sushi joint, which is pretty good. This is by far the best of the Sushi bars in Tel Aviv.18 Ha'Arbaa St. Tel: (03) 562-0981

11th floor, Crowne Plaza City Center. This is the restaurant in my hotel. They have a full menu of various "Mediterranean Fusion" offerings, but I have only ever had the Sushi, which is actually pretty good, and reasonably priced. The restaurant endeared myself to me for its complete unpopularity, as it is tucked away on the 11th floor of the hotel and had just opened when I arrived. But over the three months I lived in the Crowne Plaza it was somehow discovered, and by now it is quite packed nightly. Crwone Plaze, Azrieli Center