Tel Aviv Restaurants

Being the lively city that it is, Tel Aviv offers all kinds of cuisines around the clock. There are around 400 restaurants in Tel Aviv, serving food from all over the world, so visitors are spoilt for choice. The city has a mix of old, established restaurants and newcomers - which come and go with alarming rapidity. You do not have to walk more than a few hundred metres to bump into an eatery, as this is a city that loves food.

Local cuisine

Israeli cuisine is an odd combination of different culinary cultures from around the globe. Jewish cooking shows the influence of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Spanish, German and Eastern European styles of cooking, some influenced by the unique dietary Kosher laws. Dishes such as couscous, falafel, humus, shishlik and chopped liver are extraordinarily popular throughout the country. Challa is a very sweet, golden, eggy bread; the taste and texture is somewhat similar to egg twist rolls.
 
The bagel has been a part of Jewish cuisine for at least 400 years. Matzah ball soup is a very thin chicken broth with two or three ping-pong-ball sized matzoth balls. Honey candies are popular as Ashkenazi Passover, Purim and Hanukkah treats. Blintzes, Jewish crepes, are thin, flat pancakes, rolled around a filling of sweetened cottage cheese or mashed potatoes and onion. As a dessert, they can be filled with fruit such as apple, cherry or blueberry. Cholent is a very slow cooked stew of beans, beef, barley and sometimes potatoes, usually made during the winter.

Where to eat

Tel Aviv has an amazing variety of restaurants for every taste. As a city of immigrants, no wonder ethnic food rules here. There are plenty of fast-food restaurants, both international and well-known to every western tourist, as well as local outlets which offer Israeli food. You can get a decent meal on every street corner; you can also eat toast, a sandwich or some other snack at one of the cafés around the city.  There are also many fruit juice parlours, with Israelis enjoying  freshly squeezed carrot juice the most.

You won’t have to go far to find a typical Tel Aviv café. Get to Café Basel, on Basel Square, for a refined experience; London Café on the beach, for a table beside the waves; or try one of the cafés on Sheinkin Street, Rothschild Boulevard or Rabin Square if you want crowds and commotion. The range of non-Kosher options in Tel Aviv is huge compared to Jerusalem. There are restaurants such as Vongoly, which has a seafood menu; pizzerias such as Pizza Meter, which serves meat on pizzas; and most Asian restaurants have pork dishes on the menu.