Fruity beer in Petach Tikva
How did a non-beer drinker wind up in a micro-brewery this past Saturday night? That’s a question I was asking myself as my wife and I joined friends at Jem’s, a hot new gourmet beer factory in Petach Tikva.
Jem’s was established by two immigrants from the U.S. – Daniel Alon, a former Wall Street lawyer, and Jeremy Welfeld who worked as an events manager in the White House during Bill Clinton’s tenure.
Their new Israeli endeavor sports a large open space with wooden tables for drinking and dining; a chill out zone with low couches for kicking back; great music (we heard everything from Prince to Ehud Banai); and a set of oversized steel vats where the beer is brewed in house.
About the beers: there are six on the menu: Stout, Amber Ale, Pils, Dark Lager, “Special” (not sure what that was) and Lochness. Our waiter brought us shot glasses with a taste of each; I insisted on the Lochness, which had a light fruity taste, and actually enjoyed it enough to down a whole glass.
Truthfully, I’m more of a food guy and was delighted to find a whole section on the menu with just hot dogs. But these were no ordinary franks. They had playful names like Diablo (spicy enough to erupt like the volcano it’s named after) and the Bombay, made with spring chicken and Indian spices. We ordered the Jem’s house dog which had a combination of lamb, entrecote, over and fried onions. I guess Bill C. liked the gourmet version of down home Southern picnic fare.
If you get too heavy from all the meat and suds, there’s a basketball court outside to work out between courses.
Jem’s has lines out the door on Saturday nights; reservations are highly recommended. A pitcher of Lochness cost us NIS 66; the hot dogs were NIS 54 for each plate. There are great beer batter fried onion rings and too.
Check out the Israeli TV interview with the Jem’s founders on their YouTube above.
Foto Friday – Holyland Hashers run Tel Aviv
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Pop Culture, Sports, Travel
My running club, the Holyland Hash House Harriers, held a traditional Red Dress Run in Tel Aviv this weekend in celebration of our 777th run. The Hash, for the uninitiated (and yes, there is an initiation!), is an international running and beer-drinking dis-organization that specializes in fun runs. And here’s your proof:
Here we are, doing a bit of cult-to-cult dancing with some Hare Krishnas.
Ynet did a really nice video of the run, noting that, as Israelis tend to take their sports very seriously, they seemed mighty perplexed by the stampede of “Ameri-kookim” tearing down Rothschild Boulevard.
But that was nothing compared to the week before, when the Holyland Hash House Harriers met up with 40 Royal Navy sailors and flummoxed Haifa.
We are now getting set for the Tel Aviv Marathon, 10k and 5k runs on April 24th. (Despite all outward appearances, the group includes some very serious athletes). So be on the lookout! Come run with us! Or at least have a camera ready.
Coffee roasting and other gourmet hobbies
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, Israeliness
Hyper-specialized gourmet-themed hobbies are getting really big in Israel. It’s no longer enough to just be a “foodie.” I have a friend who has made really good beer, and I’ve met several people who have been involved in one way or another in boutique wine-making. Homemade-style chocolate boutiques are springing up everywhere now. Olive pressing (for olive oil) and curing is emblematic of the region’s symbology, with many of my peers debating various methods of cracking and spicing the fruit.
And then there’s coffee. Israel is one of the few countries that has actually survived an attempted Starbucks infiltration – and has responded by exporting our own espresso bar chain to the USA. The Eretz Nehederet sketch comedy TV show once spoofed newfound Israeli coffee snobbery with a poignant vignette (viewable here with English subtitles)
When I visited Vietnam a few years ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy “weasel coffee” (if you need to ask, click here), so I probably out-snob any of the local coffee snobs – without taking myself as seriously, of course. I buy cans of ground beans at Café Joe, after all.
But check this guy out. He takes coffee snobbery to a new level. Dima Ingret, a 36-year-old high tech worker who lives in metro-Tel Aviv, apparently likes to roast his own exotic beans, which he orders on eBay when he travels abroad on business. But more and more of these varieties are apparently appearing in Israeli stores, making things easier for Ingret and his fellow enthusiasts.
According to the piece in Haaretz which profiles Ingret, as well as Shaul Rubin, CEO of coffee and coffee accessory importer Amigo, the Israeli coffee aficionado scene has clearly reached a turning point:
Israelis have jazzed up their hobby with shiny machines and home roasters to such an extent that the hard-core members of the coffee clubs are invited to the launchings of designer machines (bothersome events that were reserved until now only for top-of-the-line machines). The coffee market in Israel has turned into an experts’ market….
Maybe we would’ve been better off had Starbucks succeeded here.
Image by jevnin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
More Israeli-Americans take to the polls
Earlier in the week I wrote about the voting event that occurred at the Dancing Camel brewery in Tel Aviv where American citizens in Israel had the opportunity to hand in their absentee ballots, write-in a candidate on a federal ballot and even have their ballot FedEx’ed to their local board of elections. Jerusalem got into the game as well this week and unfortunately the event was not held at a brewery (Jerusalem doesn’t have one but if it did it should be called “Brew-salem” and it’s tagline should be “Next beer in Jerusalem”) or even a bar but rather at the Orthodox Union center. Not quite as thrilling as the Dancing Camel but it looks to have certainly served it’s purpose. The LA Times’ Babylon & Beyond blog reports: The third floor of Jerusalem’s Orthodox Union building was packed Tuesday evening.
A cross section of Americans living in Israel patiently stood in a long line wrapped around the corridor, waiting to enter the room and juggle pens, passports and papers to cast their vote in the U.S. presidential elections. The obvious questions of who they voted for and why will be answered by the exit polls analysis Thursday. But beyond that, the occasion offers an interesting window into the life of Americans living in Israel, their ties to the U.S. and how they perceive their civic rights and duties. ‘Israeliness’ is popularly defined more by the experience than the citizenship. But a considerable part of being American is defined by citizenship, an apparent technicality but representing a code of values. American immigrants — recent and veteran — retain their citizenship. And this, with its rights and responsibilities, is not taken lightly — including voting. Many American immigrants to Israel have left behind families, assets and many practical domestic concerns. Physically moving to Israel weakens neither emotional ties nor a strong civic sense of belonging. Voting is as much a part of good citizenship as paying U.S. taxes, which most living in Israel do too.
I concur with the writer. On a few levels I may feel somewhat distant at times from my American brethren, but despite living in Israel for well over a decade I still feel that I would like my voice to be heard. I still have interests (financial and otherwise) in the USA and care deeply about it’s future. Israel has been known to catch American’s cold, so it’s best kept in good health. I cast my vote a few weeks ago though as a native New Yorker my vote will hardly count. Unlike most of my friends and others I have spoken to here I did not vote solely on the candidate’s views on Israel. The definition of “good for Israel” means many different things to many different people. And my view of this has certainly changed somewhat dramatically over the past few years. Whatever the outcome may be, I believe that both candidates will preserve the special relationship between the United States and Israel.
Polls with Camel glasses
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Politics
A landmark event took place last night at Tel Aviv’s Dancing Camel brewery, where citizens of the United States were invited to vote for the next US president by an organization called Vote From Israel.
The first initiative of its kind anywhere in the world, Vote From Israel’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for US citizens currently in Israel to participate in the electoral process. The organization’s leadership estimates that out of 125,000 eligible voters in Israel this fall, only 42,000 are registered, so they worked 18-hour days through the hectic fall holidays to register some 7,000 to 10,000 more.
Now that the registration phase is complete, they’ve set up three events where people can hand in the absentee ballots they sent away for, or they can use Vote From Israel-provided Federal Write in Absentee Ballots. Everything is anonymous and sent via Federal Express to the voter’s relevant district office.
The press seems to be lapping it up, too, as a reporter from Newsweek and camera crews from Austrian public TV channel ORF and Israeli commercial Channel 10 competed for the most colorful comments from participants.
At last night’s event, six delicious flavors of beer were on tap, including a sweet and rich stout and seasonal brews seasoned with lemon and pomegranate bouquets. Voters were given coupons for half off of any beer. The Jets-Chiefs game was projected on an enormous screen.
After voting, participants were asked to complete an exit poll, surely a key element to the Vote From Israel concept. Although the organization is officially unaligned, it’s no secret that most Americans whose Zionist bent is strong enough to put them in Israel are likely to favor the 2008 Republican ticket. And with the influence that exit polls can have on undecided voters, one needn’t get so creative to conjecture the motivation behind Vote From Israel’s anonymous funders. The results of the organization’s exit polls can be released to the public a full week before the East Coast votes.
Regardless of the conspiracy theories, the beer, football and nightlife vibes kept the proceedings last night remarkably light. One reveler quipped that he had come to exercise his right not to vote, while another shrugged that he’s come just to meet up with friends, despite being Canadian.
Oktober knows no borders
Filed under: Business, Food, History and Culture, coexistence
Modeled after Bavaria, Germany’s famous brew festival of the same name, which draws millions of participants each fall, the Taybeh Brewery held its own two-day version of Oktoberfest earlier this week. This is the fourth incarnation of the Palestinian village’s festival, sponsored by the industry named after it (the brewery’s founding Khoury family currently, er, occupies city hall over there).
The Taybeh Brewery, which offers Golden, Light, Amber and Dark beers, has a decidedly coexistence-themed flavor: It was founded thanks to peace momentum following the 1993 Oslo accords, it is marketed and bottled internationally, and a portion of the Oktoberfest profits is donated every year to peace-loving Palestinians and Israelis.
Although Taybeh is mostly a Christian village, the brewery premiered a non-alcoholic version at the festival, which should boost sales amongst the Palestinian nationalist crowd, traditionally forbidden to drink fermented liquids by the tenets of Islam. The festival also featured folk arts, musical and dance performances, as well as a tag rugby match between the Ramallah Blue Snakes and Beit Jala Lions.
Drink Beer. And Dance.
August is the perfect month for the Jerusalem Beer Festival. It’s absurdly hot (in the high nineties this week) and I cannot think of a better way to spend a hot sticky evening then drinking ice cold beer with thousands of Jerusalemite revelers. The Jerusalem Beer Festival will this year host premium producers, boutique producers and homemade beers in uncommon tastes of honey, coffee, herbs, and more. The festival caters to the beer connoisseur and the average Joe alike, as visitors will have the opportunity to taste the world’s traditional beers – though it seems like local American-style microbrew Dancing Camel – who make arguably the most interesting beer in Israel – is sadly not participating this year.
The festival is not exactly a fraternity romp but things can get a bit rowdy. Heat, alcohol and pulsating beats can be a scary combination. But the kids keep it in check and the beer festival is a wonderful way to spend a Jerusalem summer night. The festival starts tomorrow. I’m basically going to be jumping off the plane, unpacking a bit, help get the kid settled and off to Jerusalem for an evening of non-debauchery. I don’t really drink these days. I actually had a battle with a bottle of sake last week and lost.
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