I can still see it, smell it, taste it: a mile-high stack of lean corned beef between two slices of rye bread slathered with goo-gobs of Hebrew National mustard. It’s nature’s perfect food. In that timeless struggle between my coronary arteries and my brain’s pleasure center, pleasure always won out.
Until I swore off meat a few years ago, a corned beef sandwich was the ultimate “party in my mouth” and easily my favorite Jewish meal (even though corned beef originated in Ireland). But it wasn’t the only one.
I also loved my mom’s brisket and kasha varnishkas. I loved lox and bagels every Sunday at Uncle Marty’s. When I was young, the path to my Yiddishe heart ran directly through my stomach.
Because my parents were nonreligious, food shaped my early Jewish identity more than anything else. Over the years I went on to study Jewish history, religion and culture. And that meant broadening my Jewish palette, thanks especially to my trips to Israel.
After falafel from a Shenkin Street dive, who needs corned beef?
Israel serves up the best food I’ve ever tasted –– and that includes anything at Chez Panisse and Rivoli (my two favorite local restaurants).
I get all Pavlov’s dog at the thought of an Israeli breakfast: broad bowls of hummus with a pond of olive oil dimpled on top; a salad of chopped cucumber and tomatoes; platters of bite-sized pink-fleshed fish.
Then there’s the falafel, packed in pita with a flash mob of pickled veggies, french fries and chili sauce. To eat one is to cease caring about one’s body mass index, and to care only about scarfing down the next one.
My favorite Israeli food is fresh-baked sesame bread dipped in zatar, a ground spice native to the Middle East. I dare Jacques Pépin to come up with anything more delicious.
Walking through Jerusalem’s Old City, dipping the bread into my packet of zatar, I imagine myself not a tourist, but someone rooted in Eretz Israel, nourished by its fruited plains.
Of course, this is the romantic vision of a visitor. Israeli TV chef Gil Hovav has a more cynical, if affectionate, view of Israelis and their food.
Last week I saw him give a cooking demonstration at the Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco as part of Out in Israel, a celebration of Israel’s LGBT culture. Not only does he know his way around a kitchen, Hovav is quite happy to talk up Israeli cuisine.
He uses that term advisedly. Hovav pointed out that Israeli cooks have borrowed from Egypt, Russia, America and any other funky medina from which Jews deported for the Holy Land.
Lebanon even filed suit against Israel in the World Court for supposedly stealing its national dishes: tabouleh and hummus. Cue laugh track now.
I watched Hovav prepare Israeli-style tabouleh with couscous, garlic, tomato, pomegranate, pine nuts, olive oil and a metric ton of parsley (“Israelis are little goats,” he said, “infatuated with greens”).
He stressed that food is not a political issue in Israel as it is in the United States –– what with our fair trade gluten-trans-fat-and-corn syrup obsessions.
But I still picked up a whiff of politics when Hovav mentioned El Babour, a restaurant in the large northern Arab Israeli town of Umm El-Fahm. He described the splendid service and exquisite fare there.
I ate at El Babour two years ago on an S.F. federation mission, and it was the best meal I had in Israel: an endless parade of small-plate salads, breads and veggie delights. It was divine comfort food.
That day I couldn’t tell the difference between Arab and Israeli cuisine. Nor any difference in the hospitality. At an Arab restaurant in an Arab town in northern Israel, I got a savory taste of peace. Arabs and Jews breaking bread together.
That’s another romanticized vision, I know. Eating tabouleh and falafel
doesn’t bring peace or make me closer to Arabs and Israelis. But if I can’t quite see the world as they see it, it’s still a joy to taste the world as they taste it.
Dan Pine can be reached at [email protected].