I’m going to lay it all out for you all:
Israel is not exactly a food adventurer’s paradise.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing place; the fact that you can use a bible as a legit guide book is downright awesome, having a snowball fight with a bunch of Muslims right at the Dome of the Rock was ridiculous (and hilarious), the fact that I went there for free is even cooler, but really, I wasn’t particularly captivated by prepared food.
There are some exceptions of course. It is somewhat of a tradition to have Rugelach during Shabbat. What is Rugelach? Well… it’s some kind of really fluffy puff pastry soaked in honey, rolled up with chocolate love, and baked to slightly crispy on top, while sticky, gooey, and pastriliciously chocogasmic. There is one shop called Marzipan in Jerusalem that gets mobbed by half the population every Friday afternoon to stock up on kilos of this shit. Yes, kilos.
Feeling guilty from a half kilo indulgence of Chocolate Rugelach, I would inevitably stroll down the narrow corridors of Machaneh Yehudah (an market outside of the old city where the locals actually shop), and find the greatest thing Israel had to offer.
Persimmons. Dare I say, they were way better than the Japanese persimmons. I ate so many of these juicy orange jewels that everyone around me warned me of impending constipation. “You know, doctors say you can only eat one of these a day. They, uh, how do you say? em… keep ze sheet inside you.”
Try to keep a straight face when three guys with Israeli accents tell you the same thing three days in a row.
Needless to say my bowels did just fine (due to the fact that I avoided falafel and hummus like the plague after week 1), and I was thrilled to get back to NYC where I spent an honest week in Chinatown throwing bowls of sub-5 dollar noodles down my hatch, and finding any way I possibly could to simply eat pork, shellfish, and delicious meat and dairy dishes. I have very different ideas of what Kosher is.
Oh yeah, one more thing: if you think Israel is warm in the winter, look at my sun-bathed smiley face to the left. That’s how snow-less, warm, and freaking balmy Israel is in the winter.
