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Tips on Dining in Israel
For those who want to get an early start in the morning, or want to
take in an evening performance, Israel has become the land of the luncheon
special - in many restaurants, the fabulous weekday lunch specials last until
5pm, or even later. Once the lunch deadline is over, the cost of a meal can
double.
For those in a rush, or on a tight budget, the local falafel and shwarma
sandwiches, stuffed breads, and the Iraqi-style sabbiyah are healthy and
filling. In general, tipping is 10% unless a service charge has already been
added to the bill. When paying by credit card, leave the tip in cash so it can
be picked up directly by your server.
Nonsmokers should be aware of
the fact that lighting up is not nearly as frowned upon in Israel as it is in
North America. This practice is gradually changing, but there are plenty of
restaurants that allow smoking customers to do their thing.
If you have a hotel room with a fridge and keep kosher, or just want to have
some food for Friday and Saturday, plan to shop for supplies on Friday, as shops
and supermarkets will be closed for the Sabbath. A selection of non-kosher
restaurants in big cities will stay open on the Sabbath.
On Friday afternoons and afternoons before holidays, shops, offices, and
kosher restaurants close around 2pm in preparation for Shabbat (the Jewish
Sabbath), which begins at sunset. Most restaurants don't reopen until Saturday
evening after dark. In summer, the Saturday evening reopening can be quite late.
Depending on the volume of business, some restaurants may stay open beyond
normal closing hours on Saturday night. An increasing number of non-kosher
restaurants remain open on Shabbat in most cities.
To those
unfamiliar with kosher food, the prohibitions against eating pork, shellfish,
and serving (and cooking) meat and milk products at the same meal are the most
noticeable laws.
According to the rigorous regulations, only peaceful animals that
chew their cud and have cleft hooves, and birds that do not eat carrion may be
used for food; and then, only if they have been killed instantly and humanely
according to methods supervised by religious authorities. If there is reason to
believe that an animal may have died in pain, or was diseased or injured, it
cannot be considered kosher (which means no hunted animals). Only fish with fins
and scales can be eaten, which means no shellfish or dolphins.
A restaurant may maintain a kosher menu, but if it prepares and cooks food or
does business on Shabbat, it will generally not be able to receive a Kosher
certificate.
Kosher restaurants that serve milk will not serve any food containing meat or
poultry, although they are permitted to serve fish. This means that cheese
lasagna must be meatless. In restaurants serving meat, your coffee will be
served with milk substitute and desserts won't contain milk products.
In many cases, kosher restaurants may be 5% to 10% more expensive than
comparable non-kosher restaurants.
For the first half of Israel's existence, food was supposed to be simple and
healthy. Exotic spices and sauces were not Israeli; haute cuisine was regarded
as indecent. It was virtually anti-Zionist to be into the many ethnic cuisines
that flooded the country from the far corners of the earth. The Ministry of
Absorption taught new immigrant housewives from Hungary, Morocco, and Kurdistan
how to make healthy chopped Israeli salad, and for Friday night dinner,
unadorned grilled chicken leg quarters or that pièce de résistance of Israeli
cuisine, the breaded chicken cutlet schnitzel. Over the years, the chicken
schnitzel has devolved into something that can be heated up at street-side snack
counters and served inside a pita with hummus and chopped salad, like a falafel
-- it's become the hamburger of Israel.
Today, Israel is in love with exotic and fine food, as well as good wines, and
the country is awash with young, imaginative chefs trained at the best schools
and restaurants in Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles. It used to be that
half the mothers in Israel dreamed their child might become a doctor, a
violinist, or a concert pianist. Now gourmet chef has been added to that wish
list. You'll find dozens of restaurants that are playgrounds for local chefs
doing personal, inventive haute cuisine menus rooted in ancient local food
traditions, immigrant recipes, and French, Mediterranean, nouvelle, and Asian
traditions all blended together.
Tel Aviv is the center for designer
restaurants. For very reasonable price during
afternoon (lunch) specials, you can sample the creations of Israeli chefs
receiving international acclaim. In these stylish restaurants (and in lots of
moderate places, too), you might have a first course of shrimp falafel served
with herbed, rich yogurt or a seviche with lentils in a Japanese lemon marinade,
then go on to a nouvelle version of traditional oven-baked lamb served on a bed
of lentils and cracked wheat seasoned with local Palestinian zataar but cooked
Moroccan-style, with plums, apricots, and almonds. Everywhere in the country,
standards are high and menus innovative.
Strangely, amid all this elegance, fusion, and attention to quality, it's hard
to find a good chicken soup in Israeli restaurants. Trendy Tel Aviv is one of
the few cities where you can find a few restaurants serving menus of old-world
East European Jewish dishes such as potato latkes (pancakes), stuffed cabbages
and derma (intestines), and matzo ball soup. Good bagels and quality lox are
hard to come by unless you find it at breakfast in a top luxury hotel - the
combo didn't even hit Israel in force until a decade ago.
What is typical Israeli cuisine? It draws on Arabic traditions such as meze, or
a vast array of spiced salads and spreads that opens a lavish Middle
Eastern-style feast. It includes the Arabic falafel, still the stuff of
fast-food life in Israel despite the recent arrival of McDonald's, Burger King,
and Pizza Hut; it moves on to scrumptious shwarma, or seasoned meat cooked on a
spit, and served with your choice of salads and sauces all tucked into a pita
sandwich. Palestinian zataar (a traditional mix of local spices that includes
dried hyssop and salt) flavors food throughout the country, and Arabic sahlab, a
sweet milky drink traditionally served to passersby in bazaars, even turns up in
frozen gourmet form on the menus of Israel's luxury restaurants.
Like Arabic cuisine, Israeli cuisine favors lamb, grilled organ meats, and fresh
grilled fish seasoned with zataar, sumac, and dill. Israeli grandmothers from
Iraq and Kurdistan cook up lamb hearts stuffed with rice, almonds, and spices,
simmered in curried apricot sauce; and kubbe (cracked wheat or semolina
dumplings) stuffed with meat or vegetables and served in soups that are blends
of exotic, tart, and sweet flavors. North African Israelis have made gourmet
couscous dishes and tagines of lamb cooked with apricots, prunes, and raisins
into favorites in homes and restaurants across the country. But Israeli cuisine
is stretching to encompass other traditions as well. The skewers of grilled
hearts, chicken, and gooselivers that workers love to eat in places such as
Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda vegetable market and at Tel Aviv's Etzel Street in
the Hatikva district have evolved into an extraordinarily fine foie gras, which
Israel exported to France, and which dominated the appetizer lists at quality
restaurants all over the country until a ban on force-feeding of geese to create
foie gras went into effect in 2007. Now the foie gras Israelis have come to love
is either imported, or claimed to be so.
Fast Food
Falafel and shwarma tucked into a pita with chopped salad and eaten on the run
have become the national fast foods of Israel.
1. A quality falafel (spiced chickpea fritter) sandwich should contain at least
four falafels and include your choice of a number of fresh salads.
2. Buy from places with a big turnover and fresh, hot falafels. You should be
able to see falafels being fried; if the oil is dirty or idle, and not
constantly boiling, move on.
3. A good, fresh salad bar is an indication of fresh falafel and shwarma.
4. A sandwich made with giant napkin-size Iraqi pita bread (available at stands
in Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda and Tel Aviv's Hatikvah) costs half a shekel more
and fills you up for most of the day.
5. Shwarma (spiced turkey or lamb on a spit) should be freshly sliced from the
spit. If the proprietor must turn on the flame and heat the spit of shwarma for
you, move on.
6. Many stands offer hummus (spiced chickpea paste) either as a separate
sandwich choice or with falafel. Avoid it after 11am on a hot summer day.
7. Falafel sandwiches, especially with lots of essential techina sauce, tend to
be messy. Grab tons of napkins -- techina stains are forever. Pay extra for a
place where you can sit.
Dining Bargains
1. Look for weekday business lunch specials. In many restaurants they go on
until 5 or 6pm. They give you great deals and an early start for getting to bed
and up at dawn for another day's touring. Remember -- after the witching hour
when lunch turns to dinner, the price for the same dishes can double.
2. In Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Eilat, you'll find free tourist magazines and
pamphlets loaded with coupons offering 10% discounts on many restaurants. Some
of these places are quite good, and many are recommended by Frommer's. If
nothing else, 10% takes care of the tip.
3. Amazingly, kosher restaurants are not all that easy to find in all parts of
Israel. Check out www.eluna.com, a website that reviews tons of kosher choices
all over the country. Not only do you get tips on what's good (remember, the
restaurants reviewed on this site have a business arrangement with eluna), but
you also get discount coupons and vouchers for dining spots that look promising.
4. Falafel and shwarma (grilled meat) sandwiches on pita used to be the staff of
life for most Israelis and budget travelers, but in recent years, a fancier,
more expensive Israeli dining scene has emerged. With food prices up and the
U.S. dollar down, take to the streets. Israeli street food is great, and no
eatery survives that isn't good. If you buy from a stand, look for a place with
lots of fresh salads to add to your pita, and ask for a plastic bag to take your
order away to your room -- if you try falafel dining as you walk, half your meal
will land in the gutter.
5. Fill up at breakfast. Israeli hotels offer vast morning buffets, and if
you're discreet, and your hotel dining room is big and busy, there should be no
problem slipping a few treats into your daypack for later in the day.
Israel's Wine
The wine scene is fairly new in Israel. At one time, only parochial kosher wines
of little interest to the outside world were produced, but since the 1980s, the
wine industry in Israel has undergone a major revolution. The Golan Heights
(Ramat Ha Golan) Winery, which opened at Qatzrin in 1983, set new standards of
quality and inventiveness. Its 1984 cabernet sauvignon won a gold medal at the
International Wine and Spirit Competition, and the winery has received the
Chairman's Award for Excellence at Vinexpo three times. A wave of other new,
smaller wineries throughout the country followed this success.
The Golan Heights Winery remains the leader in the climb toward new standards of
excellence, concentrating on the production of cabernet sauvignon and merlot, as
well as crisp, dry sauvignon blanc and chardonnay and a good semidry emerald
Riesling. Golan Heights wines are produced in the Yarden, Gamla, and Golan
series. Yarden is the most prestigious of the three, known especially for its
deep red cabernet sauvignon, but all Golan Heights series are good.
Carmel Mizrachi, the largest winery in Israel, also underwent a quality
revolution. Its Rothschild series is increasingly prestigious, and includes
quality cabernet sauvignon and merlot, as well as chardonnay, emerald Riesling,
and sauvignon blanc.
The smaller Baron Winery and the Barkan Winery are also worthy of note, as are
the interesting wines of the Latrun Monastery near Jerusalem and the wines of
the West Bank's Bet Jalla Monastery, which are sold inside Israel at the
Monastery at Bet Jimal, south of Beit Shemesh. The Binyamina Winery, near
Zichron Yaacov, has recently begun producing quality wines. Among the
up-and-coming "boutique" wineries, look for the Dalton Winery north of Safed,
the Amiad Winery near Korazim northeast of the Sea of Galilee, the Tzora Winery
in the hills west of Jerusalem, and the legendary Margolit wines, produced by
the owner of an Italian restaurant in Jerusalem, which are generally available
only by advance reserved purchase.
Sampling the Grape -- Israel's symbol has long been the familiar picture of the
spies sent into Canaan by Moses returning with a bunch of grapes so huge they
had to hang it from a pole to carry it. Now modern Israel is using grapes in a
new way, to produce notable, prizewinning wines.
* The information is provided by the good people at Frommers
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