Food

Foodie Tours of Tel Aviv and All the Week’s Dish

Image by Graham Blackal

By Michael Kaminer June 9, 2015

A spread at Shaya in New Orleans.

Chef-Driven Tour of Israel

Tel Aviv-born chef , has shaken up New Orleans dining, is leading a private tour of Tel Aviv for a lucky group of foodies and fans.

From June 25–July 6, Shaya will share his favorite eateries — from haute cuisine to hummus joints — along with wineries, distilleries, and a few secret spots.

In Israel’s food capital, “there are so many great restaurants opening, and the food game continues to get stronger,” Shaya told the Forward.

Don’t try booking, though; the inaugural tour’s sold out. Shaya says he’s planning more. Stay tuned.

Hello, Columbus

Izzy and Mo are real. And now, so is Izzy and Mo’s — finally. After months of construction delays, the nouveau deli opened last week in Columbus, Ohio’s hip Peach District. Chef-owner Magdiale Wolmark, who owns a biodynamic restaurant next door, named his new place after his Polish father (Izzy) and Israeli mother (Mo), according to Columbus Crave.

Look for “foods of the Jewish Diaspora, using local, grass-fed and organic ingredients” — think bagels, blintzes and babka, along with matzo-ball soup, cured fish and pastrami. Wolmark’s also introducing the Shiksa, a cheeky variation on a Blondie.

Call It the Jewish Burger Pilgrimage.

For young Orthodox Jews, trips to Israel are providing their first taste of forbidden foods: McDonald’s hamburgers, which are kosher in the Holy Land. “People come back and say, ‘You have to go to the Wailing Wall and you have to go to the beach and you have to see Masada, and you have to eat at McDonald’s,’” one teen tells Grub Street, which reported on the phenomenon this week. “It’s almost, like, imperative law. It’s practically biblical.”

Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO