Coffee in Israel - enough to bring on the Coffee Drinker’s Blues!

I had some trouble choosing a topic this week. First I considered the challenges of learning Hebrew from scratch. I also kicked around the topic of adjusting to Israel’s Sunday-through-Thursday workweek. After engaging in a staring contest with my computer monitor a little while and surfing around my favorite sites for procrastination inspiration, I got up to refill my mug, and that’s when it hit me. Something much bigger than either of those ideas. Coffee!

Being a lover of Coffea Arabica in the Holy Land is not easy. There’s a total dichotomy here – between what people drink in cafes vs. what they’ll make at home (by the way, Tel Aviv does have some great cafes). On the one hand, if you order an Americano (gadol, of course) at a cafe, you’ll get quality espresso with extra hot water, just like in New York. You’ll still have to decline sugar four or five times and insist they fill it to the top, leaving no room for milk (it’s true what they say, BTW – once you go black…), but it’s a mighty tasty cup.

But at home, do people have these same fancy espresso machines? No, of course not – even in the U.S., only the most rich pretentious cultured coffee snobs would. But surely they have the standard, garden variety, drip coffee makers that brew pots of Joe the classic way we do in North America, right? Fraid not, friends.

Ubiquitous in Israeli kitchens is something known as the koom-koom. It’s a nifty enough device, an electric kettle that heats up water very quickly. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, great for whipping up a spot of tea for yourself. But Israelis use them for something different. Inexplicably, they use them for… [caution: North Americans considering Aliyah, please swallow whatever sip you are taking right now, make sure you are sitting down, put away all sharp cutlery, and grab onto something solid]… MAKING INSTANT COFFEE !!!

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!

This is a phenomenon I don’t even want to try to get my head around. It would almost be funny…if it weren’t so sad, and if it didn’t affect my quality of life so severely. Israelis love instant coffee! They lurve it. They luff it. A trip to the coffee aisle in the local supermarket will reveal about 20 varieties of the stuff – from Nescafe to several Israeli brands I’ve never heard of and don’t want to, thank you very much. What IS instant coffee anyway? I mean, besides an invention contributing to the downfall of western civilization on par with Crocs or The Snuggie. How can one possibly try to capture the life-giving essence of coffee in freeze-dried shavings, no matter how many “flavor crystals” they put in there?

In stores, you’ll also find a few varieties of Turkish coffee, which is technically a step up. But really, it’s just glossed-up instant, in that, there’s no filtration going on. The water is poured directly over the grounds, which don’t dissolve properly and leave a nice, sandy surprise for your last few sips. Blech.

You’ll get used to it, people told me. You’ll give up looking for drip coffee. Too much effort, they said. Before long, you’ll be happily drinking  instant. Then, of course, I cut those traitors out of my life and never spoke to them again.

Now, there’s Pizza Hut and McDonalds in Israel – surely the unstoppable global juggernaut Starbucks is here, too, right? Sadly, no. The company had as many as six stores open in Tel Aviv – from 2001 to 2003, but competition from local coffee shops, an Israeli recession and the absence of a proper marketing push doomed them, and they all closed. That, and Israelis’ penchant for freeze-dried poo. It’s a shame I wasn’t here then. For sure, I could have kept at least four of those franchises open single-handedly. Pity I’ll never get the chance to learn the phrase “Quad Venti Soy No Foam Latte” in Hebrew. We do have the L.A. staple The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, so I guess I should feel grateful for that.  But I don’t. You know how most children would lose their marbles at the sight of the Disneyland gates? Now you have an idea of how I react to the sight of a Starbucks.

It doesn’t make up for all this, but Israel redeems itself ever-so-slightly with the prevalence of a frozen drink called cafe barad in every little independent coffee shop. This local version of a Frappucino comes straight out of a Slurpee machine and is syrupy sweet and quite delicious in the summer heat. But in the end, it’s a little too wussy for my black Americano ass.

Thankfully, I managed to find and buy the only drip coffee maker in all of Israel. Finding good brew to put in it remains a challenge, but my Zionist butt is up to the task. Are you?