Claro: A Locavore Restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Sarona

 Fine meals and Ingredients at Ran Shmueli's Claro, Sarona, Tel Aviv. Photos courtesy Claro

After decades working as one of Tel Aviv’s most successful caterers, chef Ran Shmueli purchased one of the oldest buildings in the Sarona neighborhood of Tel Aviv and oversaw its meticulous restoration, with a view to opening a restaurant. Today, Ran’s restaurant, called Claro, receives rave reviews from all corners. The cavernous central space has an open kitchen at its hub, surrounded by contented diners. It is a true farm-to-table establishment: Ran works with organic growers all over Israel, and Claro collaborates with local wineries to create special house blends for the restaurant.

“I won’t serve anything that is flown in. I don’t think any country should import things.”

— Ran Shmueli, chef

The chef explains, “I won’t serve oysters here. Nothing that is flown in—I don’t believe in that anymore. Oysters are beautiful in Normandy, with a great Chablis. Here in Israel, it has to be different. I don’t think any country should import things. Every community has its own things, and that’s how the world should go.”

The idea is to also relate to the farmers, to know them and work with them. People appreciate it if they have a name tag on every cheese or tomato. You know who made it, you know who grew it.

This is the new mindset of food people in Israel, as in many pockets in the rest of the world. Food is best when it is fresh and local: best in terms of responsible ecology and sustainable economics, and most immediately in terms of the profound gustatory satisfaction it brings to the people eating it.

Claro >

Claro Instagram > 

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 Ran Shmueli's Claro, Sarona, Tel Aviv

Jaffa's Shuk HaPishpeshim

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Restaurant in a shuk. Photo by and © Vision Studio

“Just about any taste can be satisfied at the Jaffa market.”

Jaffa’s massive, twisty marketplace Shuk HaPishpeshim is punctuated with eating and drinking places and caters to all tastes, from the ubiquitous quick-falafel shop to posh European-style wine bars and cafés such as Sola, or the downright funky Puaa. Classic Italian food at Italkiya; American-style barbecue at Pundak Deluxe; snacks at a gastropub that may win the prize for the best name in town: Gibberish. Just about any taste can be satisfied at the Jaffa market which lies between Jerusalem Blvd. and Yeffet Street, Tel Aviv-Yafo.

Shuk HaPishpeshim flea market >

Puaa >

HaItalkiya >

Pundak Deluxe >

Gibberish
14 Ami’ad Street, Tel Aviv-Yafo
3-620-4022

Shakshuka: An Israeli Staple

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Shakshuka sizzles in a skillet. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Shakshuka is an Israeli staple that is now showing up on menus around the world—eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, often spicily cooked up with onions, hot peppers, cumin, and any number of other ingredients, from spinach to wild mushrooms, and served piping hot in individual skillets, with (absolutely necessary) hunks of good bread for sopping. Like many things in this region, the dish’s origins are a subject of impassioned debate: shakshuka may come from an Arabic slang word for “mixed up,” or from chakchouka, a Berber vegetable ragout. The dish may come from Morocco, Libya, or Tunisia, or perhaps from Turkey—some food historians date its origins to the time of the Ottoman Empire.

“Eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, spicily cooked up with onions, peppers, cumin, and any number of other ingredients, and served piping hot, with hunks of good bread for sopping.”

Many agree, however, that the best place for the dish in Israel is located in the heart of Jaffa, at an eatery unambiguously named Dr. Shakshuka on Beit Eshel Street. It is distinguished by the smell of fiery-hot peppers sizzling, its abrupt but friendly waiters, and the old copper kerosene stoves dangling from the high stone ceiling. The kitchen at Dr. Shakshuka is worth a look: there, dozens of small skillets are lined up, awaiting their turn to be filled with rich tomato sauce and clattered onto the fire, and pallets of eggs are ready to be poached in the hot red medium. Shakshuka: wherever the word comes from, to many happy guests it means “I am in Israel.”

Dr. Shakshuka > 

A Lavish Start to the Day: The Hotel Breakfast

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Beresheet Hotel's savory Israeli breakfast. Photo by vera46, courtesy Creative Commons

Many hotels in Israel offer magnificently extravagant breakfast buffets, where guests can assemble their own combination of elements and go back to sample more should they have room to do so. Consider for example the lavish spreads at Rosh Pina’s beautiful Pina Barosh inn and at Mizpe Hayamim, at the Beresheet Hotel, and at Tel Aviv’s Manta Ray (where diners at breakfast look out at the Mediterranean). For more, see the film The New Cuisine of Israel/Mizpe Hayamim: A Retreat for Body and Soul).

“Many hotels in Israel offer magnificently extravagant breakfast buffets.”

Coffee is essential to breakfast, and it’s excellent most everywhere in Israel. (This is one of the few countries where the Starbucks franchise did not succeed: all six Israeli Starbucks branches closed their doors in 2003.) Coffee is taken throughout the day, when anyone needs a pleasant jolt in the form of deliciously rich, dark, and potent caffeine, straight-up in the form of powerful espresso or softened with steamed milk and sweetened with raw sugar. 

Shiri Bistro at Pina Barosh >

Resources: Beresheet Hotel >

Manta Ray >

Mizpe Hayamim >

The Savory Israeli Breakfast

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Savory Israeli Breakfast. Photo by Or Hiltch, courtesy Creative Commons

Breakfast in Israel usually consists of a variety of small dishes in any combination: chopped-vegetable salads, tahini, hummus, baba ghanoush, pita, smoked or marinated fish, pickled vegetables, cheeses, yogurt or labneh, olives, eggs, fruits, marmalades, butter, and so on. It is a celebration of the tangle of cultures that exist in Israel—at peace, at least here on a tray full of little mezze plates.

“Breakfast in Israel usually consists in a variety of small dishes: a celebration of the tangle of cultures that exists here.”

The country’s lavish multi-plate breakfasts originated partly from kibbutz life, where dining halls served (and some still do) a substantial morning meal to members headed off to a day of physical labor.

Be sure never to pass up an Israeli breakfast which Israelis have reconceived as a varied and deeply satisfying start to the day.

Ancient-Style Dining at Eucalyptus Restaurant

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Lush, living facade of Eucalyptus Restaurant. Photo by Christina Garofalo, courtesy Creative Commons

Offering a fascinating opportunity to sample truly ancient-style Israeli cuisine, Jerusalem’s Eucalyptus restaurant is housed in a nineteenth-century stone building near the Old City walls. Devised by chef-owner Moshe Basson, the menu here is inspired by the agriculture and foods mentioned in the Bible, and includes only meats and produce from the region. From the “King Solomon couscous” to an extraordinary “mallow cooked with wild spices, reminiscent of the siege” (that is, the siege of Jerusalem, when the starving city residents subsisted on this wild edible), and the “Jacob and Esau special” (red lentil stew), the food at Eucalyptus reminds us of the extraordinary histories that surround us in this city.

“A fascinating opportunity to sample truly ancient-style Israeli cuisine.”

As celebrated Israeli chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi put it, Jerusalem is “a city with four thousand years of history, that has changed hands endlessly, and that now stands as the center of three massive faiths, and is occupied by residents of such utter diversity it puts the old tower of Babylon to shame.” A city with that kind of jumbled history and demographics—and there is only one—will naturally be a place of inspiring foods.

Eucalyptus > 

Culinary Treasures of Jerusalem’s Old City

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Abu-Shukri's delicious Lebnah with olive oil and Za'atar. Photo by Jessica Spengler, courtesy Creative Commons

Jerusalem is home to some of the most ancient culinary traditions in the world. The Old City is a hive of possibilities.

“The Old City is a hive of possibilities.”

Visitors looking for the perfect hummus might try Abu-Shukri in the Muslim quarter, whose reputation has wafted out of the city and attracts visitors from far and wide. In the Christian quarter there is  Hummus Lina, a sixty-year-old family-owned restaurant that is always packed with happy guests.

Jaffar Sweets makes what may be Israel’s best knafeh: the supersweet and brightly colored pastry—a Levantine specialty—made with creamy cheese and a crisp layer of delicate noodles drizzled with sugar syrup, topped with chopped green pistachios.

Abu-Shukri
El Wad HaGai Street 63, Jerusalem
2-627-1538

Hummus Lina
42 Al Khanka Street, Jerusalem
2-627-7230

Jaffar Sweets
Khan el Zeit Street, Old City, Jerusalem
2-628-3582

The Chefs of Jerusalem’s Machneyuda and More

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Mona Restaurant illustration, courtesy the restaurant

Assaf Granit, Uri Navon, and Yossi Elad, the three culinary warlocks of Machneyuda, run a number of other Jerusalem eating spots (and in 2014 they opened London’s Palomar restaurant, which has taken the city by storm). Among their other Israeli gastro projects is Mona, a restaurant housed in the stately Jerusalem Artists’ House, the historic former home of the Bezalel art school.

“Assaf Granit, Uri Navon, and Yossi Elad, three culinary warlocks, run a number of Jerusalem eating spots.”

While Mona’s menu is every bit as satisfying as Machneyuda’s, the offerings here lean toward Mediterranean classics (burrata with tomatoes, basil, pickled eggplant, and basil oil; gnocchi with mussels, dried tomatoes, chili, and parsley; oxtail bourguignon with polenta; and more). This restaurant’s atmosphere is very different from Machneyuda’s: it is elegant and quiet, although also busy, with a healthy buzz of creative energy.

A recent addition to the team’s portfolio is Talbiye, tucked into a cozy space behind the Jerusalem Theater. A café by day and wine bar by night, Talbiye offers carefully selected vintages paired with simple but finely executed bistro fare.

Mona >

Talbiye >

Machneyuda Restaurant in the Heart of the Market

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Inside the kitchen of Machneyuda restaurant. Film still from Machneyuda promotional video 

The Machane Yehuda market has given its name—that is, if you say it quickly, as most Jerusalemites do—to the restaurant Machneyuda, located nearby on Beit Ya’akov Street.

“At Machneyuda, it is almost a tradition that customers break into dance, and the chefs often join them—though such fireworks do not detract from the pyrotechnics of the food.”

Even with reservations you often have to wait to be seated at Machneyuda—but once inside, all customers are happy, filling every table downstairs as well as the balcony that runs around the upper level. The restaurant space does double duty as a pantry: the walls are lined with shelves holding bottles of wine and baskets of vegetables. The music pulses; the waiters are charming, multilingual, and solicitous; and the restaurant’s three chefs, Assaf Granit, Uri Navon, and Yossi Elad, have taken on near-celebrity status.

At Machneyuda, it is almost a tradition that as the evening wears on the music escalates. Customers may well break into dance, and the chefs often join them—though such fireworks do not detract from the pyrotechnics of the food. The menu is coyly worded, many entries acknowledging their inspirations—“Sweetbreads and malawach like in Yemen,” “Seafood soup Uri Buri style” (named for a famous Akko chef)—or intriguing the reader: “Fish tartar doing synchronized swimming”; “400 grams of entrecôte you just don’t want to miss.” The desserts range from the loopy (but delicious) “Snickers-bar 2.0,” a brownie and peanut-butter mousse, to the most traditional malabi, a delicate, creamy rose-and-orange-inflected Israeli custard that is a mainstay on the the menu. And who could resist the invitation to try their “F***ing amazing Swiss cheese and fig jam”?

At Machneyuda, the dancing is not a distraction; it is simply a celebration of life and wonderful food.

Machneyuda promotional video.

Machane Yehuda market >

Machneyuda >

Highlights of the Bustling Machane Yehuda Market

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Socializing at Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda in the evening. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Much of the food scene in Jerusalem revolves around one of the world’s greatest food markets, Machane Yehuda, which bustles with some 250 stalls selling fruits and vegetables, baked goods, fish, meat, cheeses, nuts and spices, wines and liquors, clothing and housewares. Vendors entice, cajole, and sometimes browbeat potential customers in a gamut of languages; and buyers in turn elbow one another in an effort to gain access to the ripest pomegranate, the plumpest chicken, the nicest bit of halvah—quickly filling up bags and wheeled carts to be dragged squeakingly home.

“250 stalls selling fruits and vegetables, baked goods, fish, meat, cheeses, nuts and spices, wines and liquors, clothing and housewares.”

Just about anything food-related can be obtained here. Two small dining places that have been embedded in the market for decades are Azura and Rachmo, both of which serve delicious Sephardic foods—hummus, kibbeh, stuffed vegetables, and much more—all exquisitely prepared. The busy Teller Bakery offers crusty European-style loaves and sweet, soft challah, and everything in between. Basher Fromagerie brings in the finest cheeses from every corner of the world. The gray-bearded Yemenite Uzi-Eli Hezi makes juices from any fruit you can think of (including the etrog, the citron that plays a central role in the Jewish festival of Sukkot). Cylindrical mountains of chalky white sweetness await at Mamlechet haHalvah, the appropriately dubbed “Halva Kingdom.” Any taste can be satisfied at this thriving market.

Machane Yehuda market > 

Machneyuda >

Azura 4
HaEshkol Street, Jerusalem

Rachmo
5 HaEshkol Street, Jerusalem

Teller Bakery
74 Agripas Street, Jerusalem

Basher’s Fromagerie >

Uzi-Eli Hezi >

Mamlechet HaHalvah (Halva Kingdom) 
12 Etz HaChaim Street, Jerusalem

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi and the Foods of Jerusalem

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Cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.

Yotam Ottolenghi, perhaps Israel’s most famous chef, no longer lives in Israel. Yet from his perch in London—where he runs four hugely successful restaurants—Ottolenghi and his cooking partner, Sami Tamimi, have brought wide attention to the cuisine of this country and this region, and recently in particular to that of Jerusalem, their hometown. Ottolenghi grew up in the Jewish western part of Jerusalem and Tamimi in the Muslim eastern part. They share a deep, visceral connection to the city’s food: “The flavors and smells of this city are our mother tongue. We imagine them and dream in them,” they write in their inspiring 2012 cookbook, Jerusalem.

“[Perhaps] hummus will eventually bring Jerusalemites together, if nothing else will.”

— Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamim

The city is, of course, an intense crux of cultures and belief systems that, to put it mildly, have a difficult time interacting harmoniously. But, as you’ll read again and again here, that very crosscurrent has led to an expansive and variegated food culture that results in unlikely but often delightful combinations on the plate: Eastern Europe mixes with North Africa, Yemen with India, Uzbekistan with France, the United States with Iraq, and so on. Indeed, as Ottolenghi and Tamimi point out, food is one of the valuable unifying forces here: “It takes a giant leap of faith,” they say, “but we are happy to take it—what have we got to lose?—to imagine that hummus will eventually bring Jerusalemites together, if nothing else will.

Cheese-maker Shai Seltzer’s Har Eitan Farm

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Shai Seltzer's Har Eitan Farm goat cheeses. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Har Eitan Farm and cheese caves are west of Jerusalem, down the eastern slope of Mount Eitan near the Sataf Springs, at the end of a long and rubbly dirt road, dotted with small placards with images of goats on them.

Like any good alchemist, cheesemaker Shai Seltzer works magic on a regular basis: changing the milk of his Anglo-Nubian crossbred goats into dozens of varieties of pungent cheeses, from the mildest, creamy little crottin disks to big-flavored, crumbly, wizened wheels that are aged for up to five years. Some kinds are wrapped in grape leaves or coated in ash; two are named for his daughters, Michal and Tom; and all are ripened in a natural limestone cave on the farm.

“Shai’s goats have space, shelter, and a beautiful view of the Eitan Valley, and they are well fed on healthy grasses and greens that help them generate the elixir that is their milk.”

Visit Har Eitan and you will find yourself sitting at a small table under a massive stone overhang: this is the front porch of the cave in which these gastronomic miracles happen. If you are lucky, Shai might let you have a peek into the stone chamber where the affinage takes place: a cool, dark space lined with shelves stocked with patient tommes and the aroma of goat-cheese paradise.

His animals are clearly happy. They have space, shelter, and a beautiful view of the Eitan Valley, and they are well fed on healthy grasses and greens that help them generate the elixir that is their milk. Shai chats with them in Hebrew, which, naturally, they understand. “Yes, they speak Hebrew,” he says. “But the main thing they do is laugh. All the time, they are laughing!”

 Shai’s great talents attract regular visitors, although his enclave is not advertised to the world. There is something quietly thrilling about discovering a hidden gem like this, and Israel is studded with them from top to bottom.

Stills from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.

 Har Eitan Farm >

The Film: The New Cuisine of Israel

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Asparagus in an open air market in a still from the film The New Cuisine of Israel.

In the film The New Cuisine of Israel, your guide is Janna Gur, author of The Book of New Israeli Food, who understands Israel’s food scene inside and out. You’ll meet Shai Seltzer and others who have played important roles in Israel’s culinary scene. The film is about Israel’s new understanding of food—in combination with a very old understanding of food—and what that means for all of us.

“Israel is creating a gastronomic synthesis of good things.”

Restaurants may come and go (and they do), but there are some things that will never go out of style: eating by the beach, hungry after a swim. Cooking with fire at night under the stars. A solicitous waiter invisibly refilling your glass with the perfect Sauvignon Blanc. Rainbow-gleaming fish, just pulled from the sea, in an outdoor market. Brilliant, irascible line cooks, loudly jiggling a half-dozen sauté pans over flames. A dark-red strawberry, picked from the stem and popped into the mouth. The scent and sizzle of onions, tomatoes, and a bit of chili pepper just after they hit the hot olive oil in a pan. Oranges so full of sweetness they weigh down the branches of a tree.

Fresh herbs. Fresh olives. Fresh bread. Fresh milk. Fresh vegetables. Freshness.

Israel is taking all these timeless truths and more to create a gastronomic synthesis of good things.

Stills from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.

Castles That Move in the Wind: A Fairytale Inn

A cabin of Castles That Move in the Wind, Golan. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Hatirot Hana’ot BaRuach, or Castles That Move in the Wind is a small inn perched three thousand feet above sea level, beyond the stately ruin of Nimrod’s Castle. Its three charming guesthouses are so far from the rest of humanity that they seem to place you in a custom-made fairy tale.

“Three charming guesthouses, so far from the rest of humanity that they seem to place you in a custom-made fairy tale.”

The owners, Gilad Golan and his wife, Yael, have appointed each cabin differently—one with swooping, jewel-colored curtains and eccentrically upholstered chairs; one a homey explosion of gingham and checks, with a rough wooden table and a kitchen with bright cups and saucers; the third a duplex with a tiny spiral stairway heading up to the bedroom, and walls the color of grass, waves of silky cloth, and fixtures in gold and silver—a place (though tiny) sumptuous enough for Marie Antoinette. All cabins have wood-burning stoves and massive, sunken beds, and are welcomingly set out for arriving guests with platters of homemade breads, cheeses, fruits, and cookies, as well as bottles of Golan Heights wine.

Before going to bed, you’ll want to soak in your cabin’s outdoor hot tub, looking up into the bright, starry sky—and then bundle up in your blanket of a robe and take in a moment to appreciate, yet again, the beauty of this land in all its complexities and variety.

Castles That Move in the Wind > 

Beresheet Hotel: Stately Monolith in the Desert

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Sunrise at the Beresheet Hotel, overlooking the Makhtesh Ramon. Courtesy and © Cookie West

The magnificent Beresheet Hotel is perched on the lip of the Makhtesh Ramon. Its outline on the horizon resembles nothing so much as an ancient Sumerian city: boxlike stone buildings that seem to emerge organically from the surrounding horizon. Beresheet’s separate cabin-rooms include cozy, ground-level spaces, each with its own small, shimmering blue pool outside and upper story dwellings. The world seems miles away here: all is stillness and quiet, and there is no commerce or blinking of manmade lights outside; only the gleam of the stars.

“The world seems miles away here: all is stillness and quiet, and there is no commerce or blinking of manmade lights outside; only the gleam of the stars.
”

In the morning, you might see a vast solar performance from the windows of your room: the sun moving slowly up over the crater’s horizon, its rays harmonizing with the striations of the minerals in the sides of the makhtesh.

Beresheet offers a lavish breakfast—a maze of offerings, from every corner of Israel’s culinary patchwork—including fresh honey dripping from the comb, creamy labneh, and sweet and heavy dates that must have just been picked from a desert grove of palm trees. Tables overlook the bowl of the crater, which glows vivid orange in the morning sun and extends in dramatic curves and jags into the distance. It is hard to keep your focus on the food for the view, and on the view for the food!

Beresheet Hotel >

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman in the Galilee

Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman menu. Image courtesy the restaurant

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman is a low-key restaurant set in the Golan Heights; its setting is verdant and wild, hills unfurling in all directions in wide rolls of misty color. Nearby you’ll find Nimrod’s Castle—an imposing, twelfth-century Mamluk fortress standing guard on the dark-green hills near Mount Hermon.

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman is a sweet and unpretentious, almost shack-like place, with a sweeping view of swath after swath of green-blue-silver Golan hills and snaking roadways, the huge, bulkily clouded sky above it all. The restaurant is appealingly funky inside, dotted with funny little witch-dolls in keeping with the theme of the place.

If you visit on a cool day after a hike in the nearby hills, you’ll find it has the perfect menu of delicious, thick stews to warm you up and slow the rushing world down.

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman >

Mizpe Hayamim Hotel and Spa in the Galilee

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Sammy Chazan (left) and an assistant working in the gardens of Mizpe Hayamim in a still from the film  Mizpe Hayamim: A Retreat for Body and Soul

Sammy Chazan and his wife, Anita, are the owners and resident miracle-workers of Mizpe Hayamim, an organic farm, hotel, spa, and more, located in Rosh Pina in the Galilee.

“The Galilee is infamously studded with stones: the line is very clear where Mizpe Hayamim’s vibrantly green farms end and the hard, gray, uncultivated land adjacent begins. ”

Mizpe Hayamim is truly a healing place in all senses. The hotel was the original vision of Erich Jacob Yaroslavsky, known as Doctor Yaros, a German homeopath who moved to Palestine in 1920 and envisioned a beautiful healing center at this spot. Yaros passed away in 1984, but Sammy Chazan has continued and expanded upon many of his ideas.

The thirty-seven acres on which Mizpe Hayamim is located are now cultivated with orchards, flower and herb gardens, and an organic farm and dairy, all of which supply the needs of the hotel’s guests. There are two restaurants (one is vegetarian) as well as a “confectionary” and bakery from which magnificent breads and sweets emerge daily, and a dairy kitchen-laboratory where dozens of types of cheese are made from the milk of Mizpe Hayamim’s goats and cows. The spa, too, uses products derived from the farms and gardens, in the form of floral essences and oils, soaps and tinctures, all with heavenly smells of lavender, jasmine, rose. The rooms and suites of the hotel are elegant and tranquil, looking out into treetops and beyond, as far as Mount Hermon or the shimmering Lake Kinneret.

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Organically grown crops at Mizpe Hayamim in a still from the film  Mizpe Hayamim: A Retreat for Body and Soul.

Guests walk on twisted paths that wind beneath fruiting mulberry trees, through patches of garden overflowing with green spinach and chard, next to barns from which curious sheep crowd to the edge of their pens to peer out. Much of Mizpe Hayamim’s staff is hired from the local Arab and Druze population, who work both in the hotel and on the farm. The land here, though now green and yielding, was by no means always so. The Galilee is infamously studded with stones: the line is very clear where Mizpe Hayamim’s vibrantly green farms end and the hard, gray, uncultivated land adjacent begins. Dr. Yaros toiled for decades here to make this place useable, and his project continues. As Sammy says: “It is a lot of work. It never ends.” But it is unquestionably worth the effort to make possible this remarkable place, where healing seems so feasible, and where, as Sammy puts it, “everything is harmonized.”

The film  Mizpe Hayamim: A Retreat for Body and Soul is available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.

Mizpe Hayamim Hotel, Spa, Organic Farm >

Cheese-maker Shai Seltzer's Delicious Alchemy

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Shai Seltzer in a still from the film The New Cuisine of Israel

Shai Seltzer has the mien and the aura of a holy man, or perhaps a wizard: he is often swathed in white clothes, his head wrapped in a white turban. He has a long, snowy beard and wears a pair of scholarly wire spectacles. For a man with a snowy beard he is, however, extremely spry with a wild sense of humor that borders on the naughty.

“When you are making cheese, you are painting.”

— Shai Seltzer

An afternoon with Shai at his Har Eitan Farm, west of Jerusalem, will likely be filled with talk: botany (of which he is a scholar), history, politics, Slow Food (he is of course an activist), cheese-exhilarating enzymes, the life of goats, international cheese conferences (which he regularly attends, and where he is lauded as a superstar), and more. He will expertly pace the sampling of cheeses through your visit, so that the palate will not be overwhelmed—“Slowly, slowly,” he advises. Plainly, these creations still please him greatly, although he must have tasted them hundreds of times.

Botanist, activist, sage, gastronomic magician, Shai is also a teacher who takes in students of cheese making, and who has shared his knowledge with women’s cooperatives in Africa and India, and more locally among the Bedouins, giving them tools and skills to bolster their own microeconomies. Perhaps most importantly, Shai is an artist: “When you are making cheese, you are painting,” he says. “You are painting with milk and with bacteria.”

And indeed, his cheeses are masterpieces. 

Har Eitan Farm > 

These stills are from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.