The Middle Feast

Tel Aviv's cuisine is an exciting mix of tradition and trends, especially in ancient Jaffa, where Arab and Jewish cultures come together in harmony.

by Kaila Yu

Wrapped in black headscarf and maroon dress woven with gold flowers, Myassar Seri prepares to teach her latest cooking class from her living room. Ingredients like za’atar, sumac, ground beef and cucumber are spread across the dining table. They’ll soon be infused into the five traditional Arab dishes on the menu, including shish barak—a ground beef–stuffed dumpling in harissa-infused yogurt—and lemon-marinated fish in tahini sauce.

Myassar Seri teaches tourists to cook homemade Jaffa Arab dishes

Seri is teaching these recipes to a handful of tourists, including myself, just as they appear in her bilingual Hebrew and Arabic cookbook on traditional Jaffa Arab cuisine. Like everyone I’ll soon meet in Tel Aviv, Israel, she’s passionate about her food and culture and isn’t afraid to show it. On my first trip to Tel Aviv, I was moved by the locals’ intense affection for their cuisine and its mix of modern and traditional elements. A popular Palestinian Israeli home cook living in the neighborhood of Jaffa in Tel Aviv, Seri is enthusiastic about uniting local Arabs and Israelis, as well as international tourists, over food, sharing the importance of “getting to know the other.” She’s equally focused on preserving these traditions amid the hypermodernizing Jaffa.

Jaffa is an ancient city within Tel Aviv, known for its mix of Arab and Jewish neighbors living side by side, and an over 3,000-year-old seaport fronted by modern restaurants and hotels. With about 450,000 residents and an impressive 4,000 or so restaurants, Tel Aviv prides itself on liberalism and trendiness—yet has a deep reverence for tradition and culture.

Tel Aviv’s stunning Jerusalem beach

Although Tel Aviv excels at street food and traditional eats, it’s also a hot food destination for its trendy modern cuisine. One of the edgiest young chefs in Jaffa is Raz Rahav. His restaurant, called OCD, leads Tel Aviv’s ultra-local food movement and was voted the best place to eat in Israel last year by Middle East and North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants. The fine dining tasting menu is a 16-to-20-course communal experience served to two dozen or so diners. Favorite dishes include the whimsical, lightly fried zucchini blossom served with foam of local sheep’s milk, pistachios and burnished savory apricot gnocchi sprinkled with delicate wolfsbane flowers.

Progressive cuisine at the award-winning OCD restaurant

Rahav’s affection for food shines through his meticulous attention to detail on the plate. While I enjoy fine dining, traditional eats have my heart, so I know I have to visit Dizengoff Center Food Fair. It’s a popular place for locals to pick up home-cooked food for weekly Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Dozens of vendors gather to sell traditional family recipes—I feel welcome as a few excitedly wave me over to show off their dishes. I try gefilte fish, kat’aif (fried Druze dumplings filled with walnuts) and tbeet, a Jewish-Iraqi cardamom-scented braise of chicken and rice.

A five-minute walk from the Dizengoff Center leads me back to more modern digs at Nahat Coffee on Dizengoff Square. It’s a contemporary micro-roastery and café that sources and roasts its coffee beans, and draws laptop-affixed hipsters dawdling in the afternoon sun with a brew at arm’s length. Tel Aviv’s coffee veers more acidic and less bitter than American flavors, as shown in Nahat Coffee’s bold cappuccino. I appreciate that Tel Aviv’s coffee culture allows for long afternoons luxuriating in caffeine-soaked bliss versus my usual grab-and-go coffee routine.

Another place to experience this amalgamation of old meets new is Tel Aviv’s hectic shuks, or outdoor markets. One of the most popular and central is the Shuk HaCarmel, which opened in 1920. Here, local produce and decades-old vendors mix with modern street-food stands. Find Venezuelan food at Arepas, Mexican flautas at Viva Mexico, Middle Eastern fried dough at Burika Center, garlicky wontons at Giveret Kwaytiew and bamboo steamed pitas from Panda Pita, run by boyish chef Idan Panda. He watches, grinning, as I devour his cushy pita filled with an unexpected mix of Tunisian-style whitefish ceviche topped with pickled onions, tomato salsa, finely chopped herbs, harissa and pickled lemon. It pairs well with freshly squeezed pomegranate juice from one of the market’s dozens of juice vendors; he catches my attention by exclaiming “The best, the very best!” while waving me over to a stack of his juicy pomegranates.

Lost in a haze of chewy carbs, I wander just steps outside Shuk HaCarmel to the Yemenite Quarter. I had been told to try Hummus Shlomo and Doron, a petite family-owned restaurant that opened in 1937. The best hummus in Tel Aviv is a contentious topic, hotly debated by locals, but this spot tops many lists.

The hummus mesabaha, a creamy concoction topped with bursting roasted tomatoes, soft chickpeas, tahini, bell pepper salsa and parsley, makes a compelling argument for the crown. International hummus creations here fuse Mexican, Balkan and Indian flavors. We shovel it into our mouths using puffed laffa bread, overlooking winding cobblestone streets.

One of my favorite spots is Manta Ray restaurant, along the seaside promenade—a must for fish lovers. Flaky baked blue bream is doused with olive oil and endive, and that’s following a 10-plate spread of seasonal appetizers like a piquant chickpea dish topped with crème fraîche, salmon with fennel and walnuts, fried goat cheese with beets, the house Balkan bread and more. Here, I don’t witness any outsized displays of demonstrative zeal, but chef Ronen Skinezes’s passion shines, especially in the nuance and preparation of his plethora of appetizers.

This last meal reminds me of my first in Seri’s living room. Sitting around her spare dining room table, packed edge to edge with lush, soulful dishes, I feel inspired by her exuberance at 63 years of age. I came to Israel to try rich cuisine, which exceeded my expectations, but I also leave motivated by the lesson to crack open and share my joy with the world. Hopefully, it will encourage others to do the same.

Full plates

“My bulgur doesn’t have a lot of spices,” explains Jaffa-based cookbook author Myassar Seri. The important spice, she says, is the cumin, and by not overseasoning, the flavors of the bulgur and the vegetables have the opportunity to shine. The dish is vegetarian but can be supplemented with chicken or other meat.

MYASSAR SERI’S VEGETABLE BULGUR

4 tbsp oil

1 onion, coarsely chopped

1 small carrot, chopped

1 cup bulgur

½ tsp cumin

Dash salt and pepper

1 ½ cups hot water

1. Heat the oil in a pot, then add the onion and carrot. Mix.

2. Add the bulgur, cumin, salt and pepper and stir until the mixture is covered with oil.

3. Add the hot water, bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes, then reduce heat and simmer (covered, like rice) for 18 minutes.

4. Remove from heat and let rest for 5 minutes.

5. Top with salad, roasted vegetables, herbs or whatever you prefer.