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Rehovot - Rishon LeZiyyon: Tiv Ta'am Gastronomic Adventureland
by Erin Rehovot
"Last Friday, we rounded up a handful of friends and had an honest-to-goodness party, complete with a table full of snacks, drinks, and conversation. Thanks to beginners' luck, the three and a half hours of music we programmed ran out about ten seconds after the last guest left; on the other hand, we've been eating leftover cheese, ever since. Blue cheese, in particular, looks a little gnarly on the fourth day.
Two of our friends had just returned from a trip to Belgrade (which is home to one of them). The visitor got a wistful look in his eye, when I asked how he enjoyed it. "The cooking," he began. "I never knew what a tomato tasted like! And the bread! And the butter!" He shook his head with the memory of the Serbian tomatoes.
Another friend talked about seeing a kingfisher near a pond, on campus.
Another friend could not stop talking about one of the slabs o' cheese. "It's Brie! Where did you find it?" He gazed at the Brie, which had been dutifully relaxing at room temperature for two hours before the party. By mid-party, it looked as though it would have liked to slide off the table and slither over to the couch with a glass of wine.
I told him about the Russian market. But I forgot to mention the tiny bakery across the street, Patisserie, brightly lit, with its red-lettered sign. (We bought delicate almond cookies there For the Party, and ended up devouring them long before the party.)
Despite discovering all that Rehovot can equip one with in terms of wine and cheese, I wanted to venture to Tiv Ta'am, yesterday, the store rumored to be the non-kosher equivalent of Whole Foods.
Amy, the other Hollins alumna in town (as far as we know), came along for the mini-adventure. We flagged down a sherut heading to Rishon LeZiyyon.
"Le Tiv Ta'am?" I asked, before getting on. "To Tiv Ta'am?"
"Be Rishon?" the driver said. "In Rishon?"
I nodded. He nodded. We got on, and handed over NIS 7 for the ride.
Sheruts follow the same routes as buses, but make more frequent and off-route stops; they're essentially shared taxis that seat about a dozen people. Like taxi drivers, sherut drivers approach the road with the same gleam in their eyes as Evil Knievel did the Grand Canyon. My experience with sherutim, or maxi-taxis, as Amy called them, was previously limited to one experimental ride from Rehovot to Tel Aviv with J., this summer; the only good thing that can be said about that trip is that it eventually ended. The benefit of sheruts is that they're not buses: the main drawback is that riding in one feels like you're on a giant drunken burro.
Getting from Rehovot to Tiv Ta'am via sherut is delightfully easy, in theory. You just find a sherut heading north through Rishon and hop on. We did this. And then we waited, as the sherut clattered through one town, and then onto a long stretch of road, and then through another town.
"Do you know where we are?" Amy asked.
"No, not really." I said, turning around on the bench I was sitting on. "But we passed Tiv Ta'am on the way back from the airport, so it has to be on this road."
Amy gave me a dubious look. "This isn't the way you get to the airport."
"Oh." I looked out the window. The shop fronts and street all looked familiar. I was a little concerned that my friend, who has been everywhere from Romania to Tunisia, was worried about our trip. I had also forgotten that Rishon LeZiyyon is not the first town north of Rehovot; you pass through Nes Ziyona, first. Somehow, these have just blurred into one town in my brain, probably because we usually only pass through them at night, at high speed, going to or from Ben-Gurion.
As we neared the end of Rishon, the driver called out something that I interpreted to be, "Last stop in Rishon LeZiyyon!" Amy and I both let out a yelp and clambered to the front of the bus.
"Is this the last stop in Rishon?" I asked.
"No," the driver snorted in disdain. "Don't worry, I will tell you when it's time!"
We stumbled back to our seats, and the sherut bumped forward. Most of the riders were riveted to the flat tv screen attached to the back of the driver's seat, which was broadcasting a local sports channel. Personally, I would have invested in better shocks, instead of live tv, but at least the tv distracted you from the jarring ride.
Amy spoke to a Russian man next to her, who was sitting with his knees around his ears. (Minivans are designed for mini-people.) He pointed to the last bus stop before a stretch of dry, dusty highway.
"The driver will stop there. Then you just walk through the fence," he said.
This sounds worse than it really was: there was a gate in the fence. "Tiv Ta'am!" the driver barked. We hopped off, and walked into the giant Tiv Ta'am store.
"Oh, my," we both said as we walked briskly past the pastry section. As in Disneyland, you can't stop at the very first ride; one must pace oneself. But we couldn't help coming to a pause under six shelves of plum wine, a moment later. Amy gasped.
"This stuff is fantastic!" she said, taking down a frosted-glass bottle. "Seventy-six shekels!" The bottle promptly went back up.
There were rows of sushi implements--mats, seaweed, rice, noodles, wooden teapots. Wooden teapots?
"What is that?" Amy pointed at a lower shelf.
"Wow, a huge bag of pickled ginger!" I exclaimed.
Amy looked surprised. "You know you're from the South, when you automatically assume something is pigs' feet," she said.
Among the Japanese, Chinese, and Thai sauces section was the salsa aisle, though without a tortilla chip in sight. Beyond the sauces lay the spice section.
"If I can't find chili powder here," I said, taking a tentative step in, "I won't find it anywhere in the country."
Bulk spices like cumin and za'atar were piled on long tables in tapered cones, like the tops of tagines.
Beyond the bulk spices were three walls of bottled spices.
"Here's 'Redness'," I held up a jar of dusty maroon specks that looked like raspberry powder. Amy read the Hebrew, and the spice turned out to be sumac.
A small cardboard stand at the edge of the spice section held an assortment of McCormick's spices, including chili powder. Mission accomplished.
But we had only seen about a sixth of the store. We wandered over to the cheese section, where small boxes of cheese proclaimed "PACKED UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL" in English, but were produced in France and labelled in Russian. "18% whole milk cheese" read one side of the label. Boxed cheese? Are things that bad in France?
We inspected the NIS-165 bourbon in the spirits department, right next to the bar. French wine! Limoncello! Amaretto! Credit limit-o!
The bar is one of about six places to sit and eat (or drink) inside the store; the barrier between it and the seafood section was an aquarium. Next to the aquarium was a four-foot-tall pink plastic lobster with claws akimbo that begged to be photographed.
In the chocolate section, Amy picked up chocolate bars with exotic flavors that you would never find in town, like sahlev (a drink). The beer section, next to it, was twice as large as the juice section, but the most interesting thing about this side of the store was its cafe, named "Street Food", with a chain-link-fence motif (which, while appropriately themed, didn't exactly welcome customers). There were only a couple of people inside (since it was late afternoon), slurping noodles.
After about half an hour of roaming the aisles, we called it a day, almost. As we walked toward a checkout stand, Amy stopped short.
"Marshmallow Fluff?" She happily took a jar.
It was an E Ticket trip!"
Source: Erin Rehovot. "ya-VOH!" "Come in!". Rehovot.blogspot.com (16 November 2005) [FullText]
"Last Friday, we rounded up a handful of friends and had an honest-to-goodness party, complete with a table full of snacks, drinks, and conversation. Thanks to beginners' luck, the three and a half hours of music we programmed ran out about ten seconds after the last guest left; on the other hand, we've been eating leftover cheese, ever since. Blue cheese, in particular, looks a little gnarly on the fourth day.
Two of our friends had just returned from a trip to Belgrade (which is home to one of them). The visitor got a wistful look in his eye, when I asked how he enjoyed it. "The cooking," he began. "I never knew what a tomato tasted like! And the bread! And the butter!" He shook his head with the memory of the Serbian tomatoes.
Another friend talked about seeing a kingfisher near a pond, on campus.
Another friend could not stop talking about one of the slabs o' cheese. "It's Brie! Where did you find it?" He gazed at the Brie, which had been dutifully relaxing at room temperature for two hours before the party. By mid-party, it looked as though it would have liked to slide off the table and slither over to the couch with a glass of wine.
I told him about the Russian market. But I forgot to mention the tiny bakery across the street, Patisserie, brightly lit, with its red-lettered sign. (We bought delicate almond cookies there For the Party, and ended up devouring them long before the party.)
Despite discovering all that Rehovot can equip one with in terms of wine and cheese, I wanted to venture to Tiv Ta'am, yesterday, the store rumored to be the non-kosher equivalent of Whole Foods.
Amy, the other Hollins alumna in town (as far as we know), came along for the mini-adventure. We flagged down a sherut heading to Rishon LeZiyyon.
"Le Tiv Ta'am?" I asked, before getting on. "To Tiv Ta'am?"
"Be Rishon?" the driver said. "In Rishon?"
I nodded. He nodded. We got on, and handed over NIS 7 for the ride.
Sheruts follow the same routes as buses, but make more frequent and off-route stops; they're essentially shared taxis that seat about a dozen people. Like taxi drivers, sherut drivers approach the road with the same gleam in their eyes as Evil Knievel did the Grand Canyon. My experience with sherutim, or maxi-taxis, as Amy called them, was previously limited to one experimental ride from Rehovot to Tel Aviv with J., this summer; the only good thing that can be said about that trip is that it eventually ended. The benefit of sheruts is that they're not buses: the main drawback is that riding in one feels like you're on a giant drunken burro.
Getting from Rehovot to Tiv Ta'am via sherut is delightfully easy, in theory. You just find a sherut heading north through Rishon and hop on. We did this. And then we waited, as the sherut clattered through one town, and then onto a long stretch of road, and then through another town.
"Do you know where we are?" Amy asked.
"No, not really." I said, turning around on the bench I was sitting on. "But we passed Tiv Ta'am on the way back from the airport, so it has to be on this road."
Amy gave me a dubious look. "This isn't the way you get to the airport."
"Oh." I looked out the window. The shop fronts and street all looked familiar. I was a little concerned that my friend, who has been everywhere from Romania to Tunisia, was worried about our trip. I had also forgotten that Rishon LeZiyyon is not the first town north of Rehovot; you pass through Nes Ziyona, first. Somehow, these have just blurred into one town in my brain, probably because we usually only pass through them at night, at high speed, going to or from Ben-Gurion.
As we neared the end of Rishon, the driver called out something that I interpreted to be, "Last stop in Rishon LeZiyyon!" Amy and I both let out a yelp and clambered to the front of the bus.
"Is this the last stop in Rishon?" I asked.
"No," the driver snorted in disdain. "Don't worry, I will tell you when it's time!"
We stumbled back to our seats, and the sherut bumped forward. Most of the riders were riveted to the flat tv screen attached to the back of the driver's seat, which was broadcasting a local sports channel. Personally, I would have invested in better shocks, instead of live tv, but at least the tv distracted you from the jarring ride.
Amy spoke to a Russian man next to her, who was sitting with his knees around his ears. (Minivans are designed for mini-people.) He pointed to the last bus stop before a stretch of dry, dusty highway.
"The driver will stop there. Then you just walk through the fence," he said.
This sounds worse than it really was: there was a gate in the fence. "Tiv Ta'am!" the driver barked. We hopped off, and walked into the giant Tiv Ta'am store.
"Oh, my," we both said as we walked briskly past the pastry section. As in Disneyland, you can't stop at the very first ride; one must pace oneself. But we couldn't help coming to a pause under six shelves of plum wine, a moment later. Amy gasped.
"This stuff is fantastic!" she said, taking down a frosted-glass bottle. "Seventy-six shekels!" The bottle promptly went back up.
There were rows of sushi implements--mats, seaweed, rice, noodles, wooden teapots. Wooden teapots?
"What is that?" Amy pointed at a lower shelf.
"Wow, a huge bag of pickled ginger!" I exclaimed.
Amy looked surprised. "You know you're from the South, when you automatically assume something is pigs' feet," she said.
Among the Japanese, Chinese, and Thai sauces section was the salsa aisle, though without a tortilla chip in sight. Beyond the sauces lay the spice section.
"If I can't find chili powder here," I said, taking a tentative step in, "I won't find it anywhere in the country."
Bulk spices like cumin and za'atar were piled on long tables in tapered cones, like the tops of tagines.
Beyond the bulk spices were three walls of bottled spices.
"Here's 'Redness'," I held up a jar of dusty maroon specks that looked like raspberry powder. Amy read the Hebrew, and the spice turned out to be sumac.
A small cardboard stand at the edge of the spice section held an assortment of McCormick's spices, including chili powder. Mission accomplished.
But we had only seen about a sixth of the store. We wandered over to the cheese section, where small boxes of cheese proclaimed "PACKED UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL" in English, but were produced in France and labelled in Russian. "18% whole milk cheese" read one side of the label. Boxed cheese? Are things that bad in France?
We inspected the NIS-165 bourbon in the spirits department, right next to the bar. French wine! Limoncello! Amaretto! Credit limit-o!
The bar is one of about six places to sit and eat (or drink) inside the store; the barrier between it and the seafood section was an aquarium. Next to the aquarium was a four-foot-tall pink plastic lobster with claws akimbo that begged to be photographed.
In the chocolate section, Amy picked up chocolate bars with exotic flavors that you would never find in town, like sahlev (a drink). The beer section, next to it, was twice as large as the juice section, but the most interesting thing about this side of the store was its cafe, named "Street Food", with a chain-link-fence motif (which, while appropriately themed, didn't exactly welcome customers). There were only a couple of people inside (since it was late afternoon), slurping noodles.
After about half an hour of roaming the aisles, we called it a day, almost. As we walked toward a checkout stand, Amy stopped short.
"Marshmallow Fluff?" She happily took a jar.
It was an E Ticket trip!"
Source: Erin Rehovot. "ya-VOH!" "Come in!". Rehovot.blogspot.com (16 November 2005) [FullText]
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