118 TRAVEL+LEISURE | SEPTEMBER 2019
PHOTO CREDIT TEEKAY
From top: A meal at Carmel Market, in Tel Aviv; a chef consults
a book about hummus; food stalls lining Carmel Market.
City’s Nur), and Alon Shaya (New Orleans’s Saba). But to
Karlitz, Israel was a revelation. “It used to be all schnitzel,
nothing to be proud of,” he said. “But now! The products
are so extraordinary, and there’s so much excitement
about restaurants. Chefs in Israel are taking real chances.”
So Karlitz gathered a group that also included Leah Cohen
of Pig & Khao in New York City; Portland, Oregon, chef
and cookbook author Jenn Louis; TV food personality Eden
Grinshpan; and James Beard Foundation executive Mitchell
Davis. Together, we set off across the country, eating our
way through its markets and restaurants. If the idea was to
spread the word about Israeli cuisine, it worked; after my
group returned home and told their friends about the
trip, Karlitz got around 40 requests from assorted food stars
for his next adventure. Chefs, after all, are no different
from the rest of us: they want to eat where chefs eat.
The next day we went to the Judean Hills to visit Hedai
Offaim, Israel’s foremost proponent of organic dining, on the
land where he grows ingredients for his Jerusalem restaurant,
Ofaimme Farm. After a long drive south on winding roads,
we walked in to find tables heaped with sparkling vegetables.
It made me think of Alice Waters. “My ideal restaurant,” she
once told me, “would be an enormous garden. I’d give guests
a bottle of olive oil and another of vinegar, lead them outside,
and say, ‘There it is. Help yourselves.’ ”
We needed very little urging to help ourselves. “This
cheese...” said Jonathan Waxman, holding out a creamy shard
made from the milk of Offaim’s goats. Marc Murphy took
a bite and his eyes went wide with pleasure. “Now you have
to try this!Ó He led Jonathan to a great platter of gleaming
tomatoes. Soon the chefs were all feeding one another,
exclaiming over towers of shining eggplants, onions,
cauliflower, olives. There was fish, both raw and baked in
salt, and, most astonishing of all, a dip made from the
charred skin of eggplants, thick as tar and deeply delicious.
“Everything,” Offaim said, “has come from the surrounding
countryside.” The wine, too, was local, and for hours we
strolled the gardens and ate, drunk on the beauty of it all.