The Details
Where to stay, where to eat, where to shop and other Tel Aviv tips. Read More
STATE OF PLAY
Israel’s compact size makes it a perfect place to day trip. From Tel Aviv, these stops are practically next door
NIGHT MOVES
The city aglow, from the balcony of the Sheraton Tel Aviv Hotel and Towers.
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB FIOCCA
JERUSALEM Much has been said about the Israeli capital’s religious sites, less so its food. It’s entirely possible — and pleasurable — to eat your way through the Old City. Start with the falafel, and, as you pass through the Jewish, Christian, Armenian and Arab quarters, enjoy treats like Arab sambousek (cheese-filled puff pastries), fresh-pressed pomegranate juice and Lebanese nougat. The nearby Nahalat Shiva neighbourhood bustles with shops, galleries and restaurants. Seek out Feingold Courtyard, a cobblestone laneway where the kosher seafood resto Dagim Bachatzer and the small-but-sweet Sakura Japanese eatery are nestled. Get there: Drive an hour southeast from Tel Aviv.
THE DEAD SEA At 422 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth. And there’s lots to see along the way: the moon-like Judean Desert is dotted with nomad campsites (camels and goats included). The Dead Sea has public beaches and private facilities where you can shower, change, grab a bite to eat and even buy Dead Sea souvenirs, like bottles of its famous mud. On your way in, visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Masada, an ancient Jewish fortress built on a mesa in the Judean Desert. Get there: Drive two hours southeast from Tel Aviv.
HAIFA Ha-Carmel, on Mount Carmel, provides gorgeous Mediterranean views and a bounty of shops, restos and sidewalk cafés. The terraced Baha’i Gardens has pride of place on the mountain’s northwestern slope and is worth a tour, as are the city’s numerous museums, including the Chagall Artists’ House with its collection of contemporary Israeli art. For stunning views, take the cable car between Ha-Carmel and the seaside Bat Galim promenade. Get there: Drive an hour north of Tel Aviv along the Mediterranean coast.
IN COLOUR
Strolling through the bustling Carmel Market, the largest food and vegetable market in the city.
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB FIOCCA
FLEET STREET
Designer Anya Fleet is one of many young artists energizing the up-and-coming Gan HaHashmal district.
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB FIOCCA
Two days into a tour of Tel Aviv, I’ve ditched my guide. Maybe it’s the Mediterranean sun, or maybe it’s the lure of the markets, sidewalk cafés and a streetscape that ranges from verdant to just-this-side-of-shabby, but this is a city I want to get lost in.
I’ve never felt more relaxed, plus I seem to have absorbed a certain level of dugri, a Hebrew word for being blunt. I find myself chatting up complete strangers, something I never do at home. I accost some local surfers, not at all intimidated by their rebel attitudes. I badger a bartender into giving me an impromptu wine tasting. I wander the streets alone at night and end up eating nuts and smoking cigarettes for half an hour with someone I asked for directions; I don’t smoke.
FREEDOM AND THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
“Tel Aviv isn’t another city, it’s another country,” says a local hipster after she learns I’ve just come from Jerusalem. “There’s so much freedom here.” And there is. It’s not just the freedom to party till daybreak, courtesy of the much-vaunted beach and club culture. It’s a mindset, a way of absorbing life that’s infectious. Tel Aviv is the New York City of the Middle East. It attracts the beautiful freaks, as well as the young, the optimistic, those looking to live by their wits.
Here, secular society, new money via the high-tech industry and a relatively young demographic (the bulk under age 40) have combined to produce an avowedly pleasure-loving city on the cusp of global recognition. “Every night, this town is packed,” says Ze’ev Lavie, a former manager at one of Tel Aviv’s culinary hot spots, Messa. “In Canada or the U.S., you can go to Vancouver or Toronto, or Miami or New York. But in Israel, at the centre of nightlife, the centre of culture, there’s only Tel Aviv.”
THE WHITE CITY
The heart of Tel Aviv is beautiful Rothschild Boulevard. This leafy artery has much of the 1930s Bauhaus architecture that earned the White City its nickname, as well as its UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2003. “The architecture reflects hopes for a new city,” says Jeremie Hoffman, a local architect and director of Tel Aviv’s conservation department. “A city of freedom, equality and simplicity.”
Today, many dwellings are shedding paint and concrete, adding to Tel Aviv’s elegantly shambolic aspect. After eating at Manta Ray, a trendy beachside seafood restaurant that Madonna is said to have patronized, we await our taxi as a drag race unfolds in the parking lot. Soon, there’s an ersatz bonfire at the other end of the lot, raucous laughter carried on the breeze.
A wonderful street for wandering, Rothschild straddles a wide, tree-canopied meridian with pedestrian walkways, playgrounds, cafés and sushi kiosks. It’s also home to some of the city’s hottest art galleries, like Sommer Contemporary Art. It’s the arts scene that has launched Tel Aviv onto the global consciousness, courtesy of the new Art TLV showcase, which promises to join the list of can’t-miss annual collector fairs like Basel or Frieze. Some 30 art galleries, many new, are spread throughout the city. Tourists can easily score living-room-friendly art at Tel Aviv’s Tuesday and Friday outdoor art market on Nachalat Binyamin Street, next to the Carmel Market. For something a bit edgier, locals head to the many independent galleries dotting neighbourhoods like Neve Tzedek and Gan HaHashmal.
ELECTRIC GARDEN
Shahar Peleg, designer behind the successful Peleg Design line of condo-sleek housewares, says the rush for the next best neighbourhood has hit Tel Aviv as gentrification moves through the city. His studio is located in up-and-coming HaHashmal. “HaHashmal today is Sheinkin 10 years ago,” he says, referring to Sheinkin Street, once an artist enclave, now a scenester strip priced out of the reach of aspiring creative types. “HaHashmal has become the design centre. If you go shopping there, you can often meet the designers, maybe even get a piece customized,” he says. Here, cheap coffee shops rub shoulders with avant-garde hair studios. Boutiques sell locally made clothing and mid-century-modern furniture. Dotted among the many buildings crumbling at the edges are the studios, galleries and designer storefronts, in a neighbourhood that in English translates to “Electric Garden.”
If Gan HaHashmal is the Israeli version of ’90s-era Brooklyn, Neve Tzedek is more upmarket in its bourgeois-bohemian cool. With its warren of tiny streets, shuttered houses and mishmash of architectural styles, the historic quarter is a beguiling maze: here a tiny patisserie, there a ceramics studio or jewellery boutique. The expansive Suzanne Dellal Centre hosts contemporary dance and musical performances year round. At night, the narrow streets flicker with candlelight and the beautiful people trickle outside, dodging taxis and making their way to restaurants like Catit or Dallal.
Built in the late 1880s, Neve Tzedek predates the city of Tel Aviv by 20 years. “This was the first Jewish suburb,” an alternative to Jerusalem and other crowded areas, says Lea Majaro-Mintz, a sculptor in her 80s whose grandfather, Shimon Rokach, was the community’s founder. By the early 1900s, Neve Tzedek had grown to 3,000. But the new city of Tel Aviv lured away the upwardly mobile, and the community faltered. Its fortunes changed in the 1990s. Artists and designers moved to the ’hood, and soon there was a demand for the kinds of creature comforts that mark any SoHo or Notting Hill. To its denizens, Neve Tzedek is Tel Aviv. Inbal Ben Zaken, a choreographer and designer who owns the fashion boutique Mizo, has lived in the neighbourhood for 10 years, after stints in London, New York and Tokyo. “I couldn’t be anyplace but Neve Tzedek,” she says. “It’s chic, but it’s still authentic.”
THE PALATE TALKS
Chic and authentic describes the evolution of the Tel Aviv restaurant scene, too. This is a country that takes dining seriously. Restaurants are packed at 9 p.m. on weeknights, and the well-travelled populace has taken to restos influenced by global cuisine, from French to Argentinian to Thai. In fact, a government plan in 2008 to send home Israel’s foreign cooks prompted a public outcry and many of the country’s 300 Asian restaurants went on strike. The debate reflected a vibrant dining scene that won’t shy away from a showdown between state and palate.
At Adora, twentysomething celeb chef Avi Biton’s restaurant, the signature appetizer is the decadent foie gras baklava, which draws on the chef’s Moroccan heritage. In a wink to a 2006 animal-welfare law banning foie gras, the dish isn’t on the menu. Officially speaking. Adora is one of the city’s most celebrated “chef restaurants,” known for seasonal menus that are tweaked as needed, depending on available local ingredients, usually with a strong fusion element. Typically, chef restaurants are helmed by those who celebrate their Middle Eastern roots while employing techniques and tastes picked up abroad. “Israeli chef restaurants aren’t very expensive,” says Biton, “and the chef is actually in the kitchen most — if not all — of the time.” As elsewhere, the hottest chefs are those who not only cook, but also cook up a cult of personality — and Biton fits the bill with his sexy looks and media stardom as a host on the Israeli Food Channel.
Another of the city’s much touted chef restaurants is Messa. Luxuriously simple in its white-on-white modern-baroque decor, Messa showcases Kurdish chef Aviv Moshe’s global-meets-local dishes, like tuna sashimi with local vegetables in a vinaigrette made with sesame oil and date honey. Messa’s wine list has been cultivated to showcase Israeli wines as much as the cuisine. The wine cellar is 70% Israeli, with the remainder coming from France, Italy and Spain.
FRUIT OF THE VINE
Once known only for adulterated kosher wines, the Israeli wine industry has been garnering international renown. While big wineries exist, the most accolades are going to the smaller producers. Of the approximately 250 wineries in Israel, nearly 230 are boutique players. Not all are good — though in fact, some of the big wineries are great — but the numbers tell the tale of a revolution in the vines.
Morane Assor, a Tel Aviv sommelier, says the momentum started quietly about 20 years ago and has been picking up in the past decade, as winemakers trained in California, Bordeaux and Adelaide return to Israel. The wineries are also entering more global competitions than ever. “That finally put us into the international market. It was only a question of time before [Robert] Parker tasted Israeli wines and appreciated them,” says Assor. Parker, the famous American oenophile, recently scored a number of Israeli vintages in the 80s and 90s.
For Tel Aviv, which is celebrating its centenary in 2009, turning 100 is a coming-out party. It’s a city that is both an hour and light years away from Israel’s political centre, Jerusalem, the latter so full of history that even the air seems different. If Jerusalem is about honouring the past, Tel Aviv is about charting the future.
The Details
WHERE TO EAT
ADORA This unassuming spot indulges you with its French-inflected Israeli-Moroccan cuisine, courtesy of local celeb chef Avi Biton. 226 Ben Yehuda Street; (972) 3-605-0896.
MESSA Luxe design, an ambitious menu and an adjoining live-music lounge make this the place to see and be seen. 19 Ha’arba’a Street; (972) 3-685-6859.
CATIT A Neve Tzedek chef-restaurant housed in a stunning Ottoman-era villa, with private dining rooms, an outdoor courtyard and a chef — Meir Adoni — trained at Le Cordon Bleu. 4 Heichal Hatalmud Street; (972) 3-510-7001.
CONDITORIA ALBERT This authentic bakery (conditoria in Hebrew) is near the Levinsky Market in the suburb of Jaffa. It’s takeout only, but the lineups are out the door and the pastries are worth the wait. 36 Matalon Street; (972) 3-682-3863.
WHERE TO SHOP
AGAS & TAMAR Designers Einat Agassi and Tamar Harel Klein’s hand-wrought jewellery displays precious stones in unusual ways, but it’s found a celebrity following in the U.S. (they have a satellite shop in Manhattan). 43 Shabazi Street; (972) 3-516-8421.
BAIT BANAMAL Owned by progressive indie-fashion chain Comme il Faut, this lifestyle compound houses an upscale fashion boutique, kids’ store, art gallery, gourmet shop, café and women’s spa in a converted warehouse. Tel Aviv Port, Hangar 26; (972) 3-681-8820.
ANYA FLEET True to her city’s Bauhaus pedigree, couturière Anya Fleet stocks her shop with simple, timeless creations, many of them made by hand. 21 HaHashmal Street; (054) 630-6010.
WHERE TO DRINK AND PARTY
BLACKBOOK SHOWBAR See the burlesque variety show “La Bizarre” on Wednesday nights, and come back for “Trash & Glam” on Thursday. 37 Menachem Begin Road; (050) 463-5536.
NANUCHKA Run by a Georgian expat, this resto-bar serves both Balkan food and music, and is a favourite among the design and restaurant cognoscenti. It’s on Lilenblum Street next to other party posts, like the nightclub Abraxas. 28 Lilenblum Street; (972) 3-516-2254.
LEVONTIN 7 This bar and music venue in happening Gan HaHashmal hosts live rock, jazz and indie shows, as well as Israeli and international DJs. 7 Levontin Street; (972) 3-560-5084.
WHERE TO STAY
Choose a partner hotel, where giving your Aeroplan number means earning miles for your stay. Here are our favourites in Tel Aviv:
SHERATON TEL AVIV HOTEL AND TOWERS Recently renovated, this 314-room hotel is located on Hayarkon, Tel Aviv’s beach promenade. The Lobby Lounge & Bar offers a great view of the sea. 115 Hayarkon Street; (972) 3-521-1111
CROWNE PLAZA TEL AVIV CITY CENTER A boutique-style hotel surrounded by amenities. The Crowne Plaza hotel’s sleek, contemporary decor and on-site Holmes Place fitness club and spa will please discerning urbanites. Hit the chic 11th-floor lounge and restaurant for pre-dinner cocktails or a decadent morning buffet. 132 Menachem Begin Road; (972) 3-777-4000.
RENAISSANCE TEL AVIV This beachfront hotel enjoys one of the best locations in Tel Aviv, and every room has a balcony with a sea view. 121 Hayarkon Street; (972) 3-521-5555.
GET THERE WITH AIR CANADA
Air Canada operates non-stop flights from Toronto to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, with easy connections from other cities across Canada. Seat-back videos with touch-screen, on-demand entertainment are available at every seat on all flights. Executive First Suites also feature fully flat beds. Redeem Aeroplan Miles for your flight.
THINGS TO KNOW
Military personnel are stationed throughout the city — at security checkpoints in public spaces, for example — but they’re generally very friendly. They will search your bags at checkpoints, but it’s just a precaution to keep you safe. Avoid photographing government buildings, as special permits are required. And get into the habit of greeting locals with a cheerful “Shalom!” — you’ll often get better service.
TRIP TIP
Book your hotel and car rental through the Aeroplan eStore to earn miles three ways. You’ll earn once from your eStore booking, a second time from paying with your Aeroplan-affiliated financial card and a third time when you settle up. Start here.
