Tasting Tel Aviv

I like to eat (and drink) like a local whenever I go anywhere new, and Tel Aviv has some wonderful restaurants and cafes. The Neve Tzedek neighbourhood is a great spot for sitting at a street-side café and enjoying some coffee, shakshuka, and people-watching. In between eating, drinking, and generally exploring the city, I had the good fortune to go on a market-hop food tour, which delightfully revealed the source of all the amazing ingredients we had been imbibing. Our local guide, Inbal, took us into parts of the city we would probably have never found without her expert guidance.

Firstly, was the Levinsky Market, a wholesale spice market that dates back to the 1920s and was founded by Balkan immigrants. Gourmet restaurant chefs come here to purchase the local produce, the dried fruits, olive oils and store-roasted coffees. It is a place with an appealing ramshackle charm and huge characters, delis with grandfathers and sons working side-by-side. Inbal seems to know everyone and we were greeted with warm smiling welcomes everywhere, as we sampled everything from tasty local olives, sausages, juices and local wines.

We then traversed the city some more to find ourselves in the thriving and bustling Carmel Market, a place of abundant fruits, vegetables, hummus and much more, just off the beaten path there was the Yemenite eatery where the welcome was exuberant, even though they didn’t speak a lick of English. There were so many different tastes, sounds and experience crammed into the 3-4 hour exploration that it was a true sensory overload–from the Persian spices and Arab bakeries–to the aromatic coffee and delicious sesame cakes, we really felt saturated in Tel Aviv gastronomy. Inbal from Delicious Israel, really knows what she’s talking about, throughout the tour she stuffed us both with food and with all kinds of  historical and cultural nuggets, taking us through the ages to the present-day foodie scene in the city. When we literally could not fit even one more sensational snacks or sample down our throats, Inbal pointed us to the best bar in the harbour to wash it all down with the local beer.

Anton is remarkably lean for a guy who loves food so much. He’s one of our star trip planners and has the skinny on all sorts of food experiences from Istanbul to Buenos Aires.