Tel Aviv in the Summer

It's been a terribly hot week and we've mostly stayed indoors, hibernating with the air-con on full blast. We've managed to come out of our concrete shell for some early morning trips to the beach, afternoon drinks and the occasional dinner with friends (once the sun has set). These hot and humid Tel Aviv summers are not easy to handle, we could never do it without our trusty sun hat, favorite sunglasses, Avene sunscreen and flip flops.

Rothschild 12

We think the perfect time for a drink is late afternoon. There is something very luxurious about having a cocktail mid-day in the summer time (when we should be at work). Yesterday, we went out for drinks with D and had a lovely time at Rothschild 12, a bar/ night music hot spot by the owners of Brasserie-Coffee Bar fame. Next time we will try their food menu.

Rothschild 12
Rothschild 12
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5106430

Morning Coffee #1

Took our morning coffee at Taza D'oro, a favorite cafe from our former neighborhood, Neve Tzedek.

Tazza D'oro
6 Ahad Ha'am st.
Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv
tel 03 5166329

We are beaching...

and building a castle.

A Peaceful Morning...

Cafe Mersand

We met J for breakfast at Cafe Mersand, one of our favorite places to sit for coffee in Tel Aviv. Mersand has been around since the 1950's and has a loyal clientele who have been sitting here since then. They changed ownership a couple of years ago and we love their logo designed by Hatayas. This was not our first time writing them up as we have briefly reviewed them before. This time around we had a Turkish Breakfast which was delicious. A small bowl of couscous, hard boiled egg, hummus, green olives, labane cheese, whole wheat bread and shredded halva (super sweet and super good).

Mersand
Frishman 18 (the corner of Ben Yehuda)
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5234318

Fashion Dept. Graduate Exhibition @ Shenkar

The Shenkar Fashion Department is maybe Shenkar's best known department and is most famous for producing Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz (class of '88). At the Graduate Exhibition 2010 we found the collections to be not as impressive as their sister exhibitions in Textile Design and Jewelry Design. Still though, their were a couple of projects worth sharing. Many of the collections focused on the details: the sleeve, the knot, the pleat, the jewelry.

The Sleeve: A jacket caught our eye from Annat Meshulam's collection For Dust Thou Art, and Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return. We are always on the lookout for a good jacket and this one, wool and beige, was beautifully constructed with sleeves coated in crumbling plaster.

The sleeve from the collection. More photos here and here.

The Knot: Lately we've been tying the bottoms of our long dresses into big knots and wearing them shorter for summer (by we I mean Rena, the dress wearing half of the two of us). So naturally, we were attracted to Omer Poizner's collection The Virgin which was filled with lots of large knots.

The Pleat: Meytal Shaul's collection Black Swan White Swan showcased a lovely black and white tie dyed pleated dress. Another photo here.

The Jewelry: Local Elegance by Yael Keila-Sagi's featured a summer dress with a richly detailed neckline: off-white rope coiled around a large flat stone with found turquoise jewelry. Another photo here.

Textile Dept. Graduate Exhibition @ Shenkar

At the opening of the Shenkar College Graduate Exhibition 2010 we were fascinated by the variety of  works produced by Textile Design graduates. Each individual project completely differed from the next. The variety of fabrics and techniques was quite astounding. It's been a while since we saw textiles this beautiful. We wish some of this vibrancy would leak into the local Tel Aviv fashion scene, where print, color and texture are a rare find. Somehow everyone seems to love their black/grey/white cotton monotones season after season...

This piece by Meytal Tzabary really caught our eye. The incorporation of the pastel crochet into the fabric with all the loose threads was eye-catching.

This series of blue and white geometric prints by Tali Zelnik could easily be made into a dress.

These hanging silk fabrics had various other materials embedded into them like pressed dried flowers. More photos of this series here and here and here.

This series of woven silk/cotton had feathers woven within. More photos here.

We found this pattern of black line drawings infused with bright colors  by Lital Gold, striking. We love a good pattern for spring/summer. Another print from this series here.

The Jewlery Dept. Graduate Exhibition @ Shenkar

When we go to design school exhibitions it's often the most fun to poke into the jewelry department first. We don't wear a lot of jewelry on a day to day basis, but jewelry projects are small and ready to wear. Hypothetically, you could take the jewelry out of the display and slip it on immediately. But mostly, we just ogle the display and make a mental note to rummage through the boxes of jewelry in our closet. The Jewelry Design projects at the Shenkar Graduate Exhibition did not disappoint. The projects varied in materials from wood and feathers to felt and gold and the projects were shown beautifully in display cases made from stacked styrofoam bases covered by glass tops. We were impressed by the marketability of many of the pieces. We could easily see them being sold at boutiques around town. There are still 9 days to go until the exhibition closes.... it's open to the public and we recommend.

A dress clasp by Shanny Alon. Carved wood fitted with internal gold clasps.

Necklace by Moran Moshinski.

A very furry necklace from The Furry Tales collection by Yarin Bylica. More photos of the collection here.

This ring by Dikla Rozen reminded us of this Dr. Seuss character. More photos of her collection here.

We loved this headband by Tal Barouch. It differs nicely from on the many headbands we've seen the past couple of seasons.

Felt Follows Form by Hanan Kedmi was one of the more playful and conceptual collections. The use of brightly colored felt embedded with computer parts was super cute. More pics here and here.

Shenkar Graduate Exhibition 2010

We went to the opening of the Shenkar College Graduate Exhibition 2010 (here's the exhibition info in English) with D and were surprisingly impressed with this year's line up of graduate design works. More to come soon...

Volunteer Work in Haiti

Our sister L and her husband Y are currently volunteering in Haiti with Tevel b'Tzedek (IsraAid). They sent us some photos of the refugee camp in Port-au-Prince and we had to share.

The refuge camp at night in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
The children at school. (The work they are doing includes checking in on the schools supported by TBT-Israid to see how the children are doing. The students just got their first report cards since the earthquake.)

photos by Irina Polak

Cafe Tamar

Cafe Tamar has been around the Tel Aviv cafe scene since the 50's and has been serving the bohemian art and literary set ever since. Now, you can since next little old ladies with done-up hair and the occasional actor/poet, while the mythological Sara Stern serves you coffee, the way it used to be.

An americano coffee and a tuna salad

Sara behind the cash register

Cafe Tamar
57 Shenkin street (the corner of Echad Ha'am street)
Tel Aviv
tel 03 685237

Snapshot of Tel Aviv

Northern Ibn Gvirol

We too watched the game!

Elkali

Another morning coffee (with a side of work).

Elkali
Elkali 1 (off of Basel Square)
tel 03 5440795

Pistachio Cherry Trifle

It's CHERRY SEASON! We were invited to a small dinner party where the guests all cooked a number of small dishes each. We thought it best to make a smaller dessert, since we could not imagine having enough room in our stomachs to eat an entire tart after the feast (or maybe we could, so it's best we did this instead). Dorie Greenspan had us salivating over Pierre Herme's Streusel Tart with Pistachios and Cherries from The Cook's Book. This served as our inspiration as we decided to deconstruct the dessert and turn a tart recipe into a trifle recipe.

Well, the original recipe called for a pastry tart filled with almond pistachio cream and cherries and topped with an almond streusel. We applied our architects' mind, developed over many years of intense study and carefully crafted individual pistachio cherry trifles.

See the recipe after the jump.

Cafe Michal

Went out to brunch with R and I to Cafe Michal, a local cafe in our neighborhood. They always have the prettiest flowers, but their location is a bit noisy.

Cafe Michal
230 Dizengoff st. (corner of Jabotinsky)
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5230236