ATHENS — Unless you are in possession of an Israeli passport, getting into Israel has been no easy feat since around this time last year due to the tangle of PCR testing requirements and Covid quarantine protocols. As of May 20, though, everything has changed. That’s when Israel abolished the PCR testing requirement for visitors — tourists and Israeli citizens alike — and as of next week it will scrap the mask requirement for international flights departing from Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport. So now you can get back to the normal challenges and subversions of the everyday that come with traveling to the only democracy in the Middle East. Last spring I was on a mission to Israel with the twin objectives of getting vaccinated and of retrieving some furniture that had been languishing for half a decade in a friend’s apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva. My friend is a reserve tank driver in the IDF, and his patience with my storage habit was wearing thin. He is also a fantastic driver of vehicles that are not tanks, and thanks to his largesse behind the wheel in the space of one sweeping, “Ferris Bueller”-style day, I made a half-dozen discoveries that a year later remind me it may be time to get my tuchus back to Israel. With the sweetest find I begin.1. Dudu Outmezgine Patisserie DesignThis sleek pastry shop in Ramat HaSharon, just north of Tel Aviv, is one of the best discoveries I have ever made in Israel, and this makes my present distance from it as bitter as Dudu’s treats are sweet. I call him Dudu because despite years of attempts to master the pronunciation of non-Ashkenazi Jewish names, that is still a futile undertaking. Anyway, Dudu does delightful cakes and macaroons a cut above any I’ve tasted at Paris, yet the most spectacular thing you can try is also the smallest: not exactly truffles, but intensely flavored chocolate spheres infused with widely varied flavors like white chocolate raspberry, rich coffee, and volcano chocolate caramel. The luscious orbs are decorated with jewel-like precision and, no overstatement, taste like they come from another world. The Dudu orbs. The New York Sun/Anthony Grant2. Gino JuicesAs anyone who has been to Israel will tell you, the fruits and vegetables you will taste there are among the world’s best. There are many reasons for that, none or all of which are germane to my discovery of the best fruit juices I’ve ever tasted — and I’ve been to Brazil. You can find Gino Juices, made by a company called Sahut, at various points of sale in Israel, but for the widest selection go to one of the juice bars like the one at 24 Ussishkin St. in Ramat Hasharon, where you can choose from a sense-shifting red berry blend, the tangiest pineapple juice, crisp lemonade to help slay the summer heat, and many more. The thing to do is stock up on as many of the round bottles of juice as you can and load up your hotel’s mini-bar accordingly.3. ApolloniaAttention: Apollonia is not the latest fashion emporium on Dizengoff Street. This archaeological site and minute national park is, however, a priceless window on the vast, romantic sweep of Levantine history in a stunning location easy to find thanks to its proximity to Herzliya Pituah. About the history of the place reams could be written, founded as it was by Phoenicians and littered as it is with sun-baked ruins from whoever has marched past the sea-facing clifftop ever since. The best part is what remains of the Crusader castle, which held strong during the Battle of Arsuf in 1191, later fell to the Mamluks, and is now like the breezy site that surrounds it — a glorious if somewhat overlooked member of the empire of cultural tourism. Do not forget the sunscreen.4. VeritasRachel Segal is the entrepreneurial Israeli woman whose small company has formulated the best shampoo I have ever used: It’s the Volumizing Shampoo of the Veritas True Beauty range, which I discovered while shopping for — you guessed it — Gino juices at the great Israeli grocery store chain called Tiv Ta’am. Walking into any given Tiv Ta’am is like entering a cross between Dean & DeLuca and one of the better, newer outposts of Duane Reade: You never know what you’ll find, and you didn’t know much you needed it. The Veritas shampoo features lilac extract and organic rosehip oil. It is wonderfully fragrant and really does volumize. Regretfully, I profess that at my age, my hair needs all the volume it can get. Ms. Segal also swears by the Renewal Alpha Hydroxy Serum.5. David SassoonWhen I lived in the great city of Tel Aviv, I was a regular customer of David Sassoon, whose main menswear boutique and atelier was housed in a pre-Bauhaus mansion in Mohilever Street, by the southern end of the Nachalat Binyamin market street. When I strode by on my last visit, I found the shop had closed, the urban villa overtaken by vines. As often happens in Tel Aviv, though, serendipity stepped in and took over. A few blocks away in Montefiore Street I stumbled into his new shop, which like its predecessor is an apparel-packed man cave in the best sense of the term. This is the place where Israeli guys come to get gussied up for marriages and such, purveyors of bespoke formal attire in Israel being few and far between. Yet the casual stuff is tops and also custom-made: When wearing a sport jacket or spiffy shirt from David Sassoon outside Israel, I’m often queried as to its source. View of Sarona Market. The New York Sun/Anthony Grant6. Sarona MarketWhen Tel Aviv’s Sarona marketplace opened in 2015, on part of the former German Templer colony near the HaKirya military base, it was pretty underwhelming. Fast-forward to the present and it has matured to become the biggest enclosed food hall in Israel. Restaurants like Claro and Piazza Rustico are mainstays of the Tel Aviv foodie trail. The shops are too myriad to mention, but you want flavored salt from the Dead Sea? Gourmet cheeses of all kinds? Fantastic coffee or deli sandwiches? You will find it all — and that is only on the inside.Outside, all the little houses that once belonged to the German Templer emigrants to Palestine in the 19th-century are now converted into trendy boutiques such as Story for fashion, Brooks running shoes, Tuttocrema for gelato, the Tasting Room wine bar, and more. The HaTachana marketplace, a historic railway station between Neve Tzedek and Old Jaffa that was repurposed as an outdoor shopping area in 2010, is arguably more atmospheric, but Sarona has a real rattle and vitality about it. Glass towers are rising everywhere around the site, with all the attendant Manhattan-style thrum, and everybody’s noshing away and the sun is high: Tel Aviv at its frenetic, unmasked best.
