On Saturday, we ventured out to Wadi Nisnas, a Christian Arab neighborhood that has a small market on Saturdays. Here’s Sarah at Nanima Sabithi restaurant, a small family-owned restaurant. When we needed help reading the menu, the owners just shouted to the five other tables asking if anyone spoke English. Several patrons shouted out, none too helpfully “Stuffed,” “Rice,” or “it’s good.” We ordered humus with foul (pronounced “fool”), i.e. fava beans, which was good and spicy, and for our other dish just ordered what another table was having: a plate of vegetables: rice and lentil salad, okra, eggplant, and some sort of greens with some sort of meat in them. I liked the hummus best, but Sarah was partial to the okra.
So far, we’ve only gotten supermarket-style pita here. At Bedouin Tent in Brooklyn, they have a guy making the pitas in an oven right in front which, so far, puts Israel to shame. Where can we do better?
Next, it was on to a bakery called Conditory Allenby (Allenby is the street, “Conditory” is a mystery word which sounds sort of like English, but isn’t) [Sarah's note: it means hidden place]. After ordering a plateful of baklava and knaffe (like baklava, but made out of Kellogg’s-style shredded wheat) we noticed that the reason people visit the conditory: a peculiar dessert. It looked like custard covered in neon orange knaffe. [Sarah's note: it was not covered in knaffe] They brought it out from the kitchen in wide, flat pans that were at least two feet square. They put a slice on a plate and then a whole family would pick up forks and share it. Every other family that came in ordered this stuff. I guess we have to go back…
Afterward, we walked up the hill to Madatech, a science museum located in the Technion’s original city campus. All over the city are advertising flags for the “Robot Zoo”–a temporary exhibit that
tries to teach about animal physiology and robotics, and which Noah has wanted to see since our first day here. Most of the exhibit was above his head. His favorite part can be seen in this youtube video.
Roy Goodman
Sarah Berger
Conditori or Konditori is a confectionery shop. At first I thought it was Italian, but it wasn’t in our Italian dictionary. Dad thought is was German. I found references to shops in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc. on Google.
[...] we’ve been in Israel. He received an invitation at school that there would be a party at the Madatech (the children’s science museum). We were a little surprised, given that there are 36 kids in [...]
[...] decided to walk over from where we were in the German Colony to Wadi Nisnas, an Arab neighborhood we visited when we first moved here. We decided to walk by the port, since we had never been in that part of town before. Here is [...]