•  DA'AT
• People
• Media
• Activities
• Food
• Places
• Shopping

Food: The Frozen Seat

Move over chummous, falafel and pita; it’s time for some frozen treats. With long, hot summers, Israel had learned the benefits of ice in one’s drinks, and even better, mixed, blended and shaken in one tall, cool gulp. We’ll accept some cone-licking as well.

There are the obvious choices, such as Israeli coffee chain Aroma’s Ice Aroma, a pre-mixed frozen shake that’s heavy on the sugar and coffee, and also available in iced chocolate. Aroma was one of the originators of the ‘ice café’, the frozen coffee slushies now found in nearly every café and kiosk, although Aroma also offers the diet Ice Aroma and a personal favorite, the ice cappuccino, a more classic combination of espresso and milk on ice.

Another Israeli favorite is the limonana, lemonade with mint, which can be created in a number of forms. The supermarket version in a bottle is straight lemonade with mint accents. But you can also find crushed ice versions of the limonana, combining slushy lemonade and fresh mint blended together for a cooling green-tinted drink. It’s become so popular that they’re even offering it at an Israeli café in Warsaw. And now, in addition to limonana, you can find pomegranate, mango and passion fruit slushies.

For other cool treats, check out some top choices:

• Tel Avivians love the ice cream offerings at Iceberg, with options such as Tangerine and Basil sorbet, Halva Pistachio and Banana Honey ice cream.
• Tel Aviv’s Arlekino offers handcrafted chef gelato, and at their Ben Gurion Boulevard branch, vanilla with fresh fruit, in honor of Israel’s first prime minister, who reportedly ate yogurt prepared by Paula, his wife, each morning.
• At Eden Teva Market, Israel’s answer to Whole Foods, there is great goat milk ice cream to be found, in a wide array of flavors.
• Over in Jerusalem, a current favorite spot is Fruit Bar, on Emek Refaim Street. People line up for the low fat yogurt topped with fresh fruit and syrups, and now that summer is here, are availing themselves of the milk, yogurt and fruit-based shakes.
• Next door to Fruit Bar is one of the local Aldo’s, Israel’s largest gelato company with branches all over the country, and now on New York’s Upper West Side, where it’s called Screme. We love the dark chocolate and limonana sorbet, although that’s called mojito at Screme.
• For some countryside treats, consider visiting the Ben and Jerry’s factory store in Yavneh, where you can actually get a real ice cream sundae as well as pints of ‘seconds’ on sale.
• Up in Tzippori, where the tiled depiction of the Mona Lisa of the East resides, the Tzon-El dairy farm offers sheep’s milk ice cream and goat milk yogurt, not a bad alternative for the lactose intolerant among us.

Iceberg, 108 Ben Yehuda Street; 31 Rothschild Boulevard and 24 Ibn Gvirol Street
Arlekino, 39 Ben Gurion Boulevard; 267 Dizengoff Street
Eden Teva Markets can be found in Poleg, Or Yehuda, Ramat Hasharon, Ramat Gan, Ashdod, Kfar Saba, Rishon Lezion and Tel Aviv
Fruit Bar, 46 Emek Refaim Street
Screme, 2030 Broadway; 234 West 42nd Street
Aldo can be found on Emek Refaim, Ben Yehuda Street, Jaffa Street and the central bus station in Jerusalem
Ben and Jerry’s, 1 Hamesav Street, Yavneh
Tzon-El Dairy, Ellis Farm, Moshav Tzippori

Food

• The Guava Debate
  October 27, 2011
• Fire Up
  May 16, 2011
• Beer Man Here
  March 02, 2011
• Au Naturel
  January 17, 2011
• Nir Zook Noshes
  November 29, 2010
• Red hot chilli peppers
  October 17, 2010
• Nana’s Boys
  September 06, 2010
• The Frozen Seat
  June 10, 2010
• Take the Goat Route
  April 20, 2010
• Winter Treats
  March 04, 2010