The magical food of Eilat

Mum and I only ate at one restaurant while we are in Eilat (apart from Aroma but that doesn't count) and it was so good, it gets a little blog post all to its awesome self.

It's called Hamasger 5 located conveniently at 5 Hamasger St in the old industrial area in Eilat.  The restaurant is fairly small and my understanding is that it's owned by a husband and wife duo who love to cook.  Amazing, right!?  It's rated #1 on Tripadvisor and after visiting, I totally understand why.

The menu changes daily based on seasonal produce + what the duo feel like cooking and it's written in Hebrew on a blackboard.  However, don't be phased if you can't put more than three Hebrew letters together (like me), the waitress, and or husband or wife, will take the time to translate the entire menu for you.

Now, I'll be honest, after living in Israel for 3.5 months, every time I see pork on a menu, I get really really excited and have to order it, photo it and then talk about how delicious it was for at least a week post fact, and this meal was no different.  Mum and I shared proscuitto, potatoes, broccoli (another fairly rare vegetable in these parts) and blue cheese sauce for entree, some sort of German pork, potato and cabbage dish for main and the most divine lemon trifle for dessert.  I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking but it really was 15/10.

MM x

From Eilat to Tel Aviv

Mum and I have arrived in Tel Aviv - the last stop on our great Israeli adventure.  We started the epic drive at 9am this morning and made it here around 1pm.  The drive, like the drive to Eilat, was incredible!  Lots of rocks, sand, and gorgeous desert valleys.

We also saw a few signs that made us giggle / #onlyinisrael.  My fav one is the 'caution ahead, dangerous curves' (which makes me think of Kim Kardash) but the curves were so dangerous I didn't have time to snap a photo:

After we made it to Tel Aviv and dropped the car off - which was legit a 1.5 hour experience because we couldn't find a petrol station and then we couldn't find the actual place to drop the car off and driving in Tel Aviv is the most stressful thing in the whole entire world - we went to my favourite cafe in the whole of Israel - XOHO cafe.

Lolz - who rides a segway to brunch? 

XOHO reminds me so much of Melbourne aka why I love it so much.  They have an excellent brunch menu featuring a lot of vegan options and the most amazing baked goodies which are all baked on site.  Even the bathrooms are cool; plastered with post-it notes that guests can write on.

 

I had one of their winter specials, the matcha latte with soy, Mum ordered a juice and we shared the most divine cheesecake - espresso and nutella flavoured.  The latte was incredible and it reminded me so much of Asia.  Oh, and the cheesecake. O-M-G. And I shouldn't forget to mention XOHO has a cat that sits around the cafe playing with guests and napping wherever it sees fit.

Following this, Mum and I walked around Dizengoff and ended our adventure by buying a few more sufganiyot - this time from Roladin.

MM x

Eilat in photos (and a few words)

Mum and I spent today in Eilat after our mission of a drive here yesterday.  Eilat is a touristy town known for beaches, diving, snorkelling and sun so seeing as the temperature was a gorgeous 26 degrees Celsius, we thought we would hit up the beach.

For those geography buffs out there, Eilat is located on the Red Sea at the Southern pinnacle of Israel smack bang between Egypt and Jordan - wooo!  The beaches are described as the North beach or the South beach, which has the coral reef and all the killer diving spots.

Unfortunately, and as I have since discovered, the Red Sea is known for being particularly cold all year round and today was no exception.  So after dipping our toes in the Southern beach and deciding that hypothermia wasn't on the cards, we decided to drive around to have a look at the Northern beaches and find a suitable place to read our books in the sun.  The drive was really something.  It was "beach" followed quickly by rocks and desert as Eilat is situated in the Negev Desert:

The view out of our mini car windows

Rocks, rocks and more rocks.

So after stopping for an Aroma and reading our books, it was time to get home to prepare for Shabbat dinner.  One of my fellow ITFers is also in Eilat with her family so we thought, hey, what's better to do with 7 Jews on a Friday night than to have an international Shabbat dinner?!  So we did!  

Seeing as it's Hanukkah, I wanted to go all out and make latkes to help celebrate that miraculous oil a little more.  I wouldn't say latkes are the easiest thing to cook but they basically involve grating potato and onion, draining off as much liquid as you can, combining some egg and flour and frying in copious amounts of hot oil.  I suffered two small burns and burnt about 4 of them but alas! I made latkes and they were delishhhhhhhhhhhh.  All these Jew wife skills I'm gaining are defs going on my resume.

 

All in all, another excellent day of sight-seeing + being Jewish.

MM x