Anyone visiting the Middle East can immediately sense how their people care about making sure tourists will eat very well. Serving good food and good beverage are part of the Palestinian behaviour and way of life. Abundance of bread, meat, tabule, eggplant, stew, spicy dishes and so. These are pretty much the essence of Jordan cuisine.
Colors, aromas and sounds all mixed and as varied as possible. Entering this market leaves anyone open-mouthed and dazzled by its vast cultural and gastronomic richness. It is one of the largest markets in the entire Middle East and, of course, the largest in Jerusalem. Israel has wonderful markets, but Mahane Yehuda has an incomparable level.
I have already imagined myself living in Den Haag inumerous times, not only because the cost of living is infinitely lower than the capital Amsterdam, but also because it has a very special personality, far from a certain chaos that inhabits Amsterdam. If I were living there, these would be the places I would certainly most often go to:
Any city that is clearly growing has new restaurants opening one after the other. But what makes a restaurant cool can’t be just its food. It is the ambience, the service, the way the staff make their customers feel good, the décor. Here is my list of favorite restaurants, some are new, others, not so much.
The way the Dutch have been interacting with food is completely different from what it was four years ago. And way much better! I apologize to my Dutch friends, but the truth is their gastronomy used to be one of the less appealing in the world. Some food habits are hard to understand, but they justify this issue.
Certain foods can only be appreciated by the ones who’ve been eating them since childhood. Take for example the Dutch candy known as ‘dropje’: it has an odd taste and it is not sweet as one would expect from a candy. I dare to say that no one, except Dutch-borns, actually like it.
Just like in Brazil, the cuisine in Tel Aviv is going through a moment of great visibility and evolution. Food there is fashionable and much better today than it was a few years ago. People go out to eat more, spend more money, chefs become celebrities, food markets are a meeting place, street food has become cool.
The Dutch pragmatism is something easily associated with creativity, I believe, in most of the times. Their culture preserves simple habits that always find ways to achieve a low-key lifestyle, full of joy and social/work opportunities. I carefully selected three places that follow this philosophy and present themselves much more than a restaurant-bar.
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One of the most interesting ways to get to know the local food is visiting food markets and street fairs: a tip that would seem obvious, if it was not for the conceptual change that these types of food centers have been going through.