Morning Coffee #3

Today's morning coffee @ Kaymak.

Kaymak
49 Lewinsky st.
Lewinsky Market (Shuk Levinsky)
Tel Aviv

Caravan Inn

Often when we visit Jerusalem we make our way to Abu Gosh for some simple no-nonsense local food. By local food we mean, hummus, pita and all the yummy stuff on the menu that comes in between like kubbeh (a fried croquette made from a bulgur shell stuffed with minced beef or lamb), and siniya (a tehihi and ground meat casserole). Every Israeli has their favorite place to go for hummus etc. and ours (in Jerusalem) is Carvan Inn. Tom's father has been eating there since the 1960's and it has become family custom to meet there for dinner whenever some of us are in the neighborhood. They have delicious kebabs and stuffed vegetables and Turkish coffee and baklava are on the house.

Kubbeh

Grilled Pita with Zatar

Hummus and Kubbeh

Siniya

Meat Kebabs and Majadera (rice and lentils)

Caravan Inn
27 Derech Hashalom
Abu Gosh
Jerusalem
tel 02 5342744

Things we make at home

We made some Summer Pea Soup. Check out what we're cooking on The Royal Kitchen.

The New Israel Museum

Here are some more photos from the new Israel Museum now open to the public. We warmly recommend, especially for the very contemporary curating.

The newly constructed Entrance Pavilion.

The Entrance Pavilion and Museum Shop.

The new hall of passage.

Some works we managed to capture at the Still/Moving exhibition. We snapped away (although it was forbidden). Works by Olafur Eliasson and Junya Ishigami.

Anish Kapoor @ The Israel Museum

We took a Saturday trip to Jerusalem to see the newly renovated Israel Museum and the newly commissioned site specific, Anish Kapoor sculpture, Turning The World Upside Down, Jerusalem. Its  made of polished stainless steel, stands 5 meters high and reflects an inverted image of the museum and the surrounding hills. More on our museum visit soon...

Morning Coffee #2

Today's morning coffee @ Hatachtit.

Hatachtit
9 Lincoln st.
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5618759 / 057 9378649

Nanuchka

For many years, Nanuchka has been one of Tel-Aviv's much celebrated restaurant-bars. The hazy atmosphere, beautifully eclectic/quirky interior, electronic music, together with excellent Georgian dishes (and Georgian wine!), made us all feel proud of the Great Bubble in which we live. Unfortunately, they moved and their new location just doesn't live up to the former charm.

As another turn-of-the-century building made way for a glass tower, Nanuchka was forced to relocate. Going to Nanauchka's used to feel like eating at Grandma's, albeit a super-cool Grandma. Now it doesn't feel like much at all. Let's just say, Grandma's furniture doesn't really go in the new living room... The place suffers from bad spacial planning, destructive lighting and boring back garden. Add this to the suburban family crowd, who only recently heard yesterday's news and we were not pleased.
On the other hand, the food is still delicious. After passing the noisy "food court" we were seated to our overly lit table at the back garden. For starters we ordered the Pkhali, a large and delicious dish of Georgian antipasti (walnut salads, pickles, and stuffed vine leaves). We also ordered a Farmer's Salad with a warm and mouth-watering cornbread filled with salty cheese. The main dish of Lamb Ossobuco in White Bean Stew, was not to fatty, and had a wonderful tangy-ness, and the Eggplant with Goat Cheese, Yogurt and Tomato Sauce was simple but flavorful. An all time favorite desert, the Churchkhela, walnuts wrapped in hard grape jelly, was fabulous and as tasty as you find it on the sideways outside of Tbilisi (we know because we've been there).
It was VERY hard for us to ignore the poor aesthetic choices of the new location. This made it difficult for us to enjoy our meal. But as we are big suckers for Georgian food we'll just have to return and keep our eyes closed.

Pkhali

Lamb Ossobuco

Eggplant with Goat Cheese

Churchkhela

Nanuchka
28 Lilenbloom street
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5162254

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.