With these crazy Israeli ice cream flavors, who needs Ben & Jerry’s

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You probably thought the big Israeli ice cream story of the summer was the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to boycott West Bank settlements. If so, you clearly haven’t been sampling the latest and zaniest local twists on this classic treat – many of which challenge the very notion of how ice cream should taste, or be served.

To put it bluntly: move over Chunky Monkey and Chubby Hubby; olive oil, halva, pine nuts, honey, za’atar (that famous Middle Eastern spice mixture) and sea salt (lots of it) are the new flavors of the month in Israel.

Blame it on the lack of tourists, which could mean less of a need to accommodate conventional tastes. Or blame it on the extended coronavirus lockdowns, which could have thrown some imaginations into overdrive. Whatever the reason, there’s no denying that ice cream makers in Israel have gone totally nuts this summer. And judging from the lines outside their shops, their wild bout of experimentation appears to be paying off.

Indeed, whoever said ice cream had to be sweet – or served in a cone, for that matter? At Gelato Variegato, which opened four months ago in one of Jerusalem’s hippest neighborhoods, proprietor Nir Levy insists there is only way to serve bitter-chocolate, vegan-friendly sorbet: scooped onto a slice of toasted baguette with olive oil drizzled on it, followed by a sprinkling of coarse salt.

At Tel Aviv’s Arte, an artisan scoop shop opened by a scuba-diving duo who recently immigrated from Italy, takeaway customers seeking recommendations get this tip from the boss: combine one scoop of pine nut ice cream with one scoop of saffron ice cream (“Trust me,” he tells them, “the two flavors go beautifully together”), then top it with a thin slice of hot Parmesan cheese grilled to a crisp in the oven for a special Italian touch.

‘No shortcuts’

“What happened with wine here in Israel is now happening with ice cream,” says Oded Bar, grandson of the founder of Glida Be’er Sheva, which is one of Israel’s oldest ice cream chains. “We’re getting better and better at it.”

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Another way of looking at it, adds Bar, who inherited and runs the family business, is that Israeli ice cream makers finally started to embrace the basic rules his Polish-born grandmother always preached. “What I learned from her is that you need to put good things in if you want good things to come out – there are no shortcuts,” he says.

Long before local ice cream makers were thinking about taking advantage of what the land of Israel and its climate had to offer, he says, his grandmother – who opened the chain’s first branch in 1950 – was already adding chunks of cactus fruit to her vanilla blend.

“Just the other day, a guy stopped into the store and told me he used to pick the cacti for her right nearby here in the desert and deliver them to the shop,” relays Bar, pointing out that this was before the prickly fruit – famously known in Israel as the sabra – was sold in supermarkets.

Perhaps the only other ice cream chain in the country with that long a history – an even longer one, in fact – is located up north, in the Arab city of Shfaram.

Today, Shfaram Ice Cream is run by the grandsons of the founder – a woman from the West Bank city of Nablus, known throughout the region, they say, for her scrumptious knafeh (a traditional Middle Eastern dessert typically made with shredded filo pastry, soaked in syrup and filled with melted cheese).

In recent years, the grandsons have been experimenting with a brand-new concept: ice cream flavors inspired by those traditional Middle Eastern desserts. Proprietor Suhiel Zaitun thinks his grandmother would be proud that one of the biggest hits on their menu this summer is a knafeh-flavored ice cream reminiscent of her signature dish. “We have lots of Jewish customers who come especially from Tel Aviv for it,” he boasts.

Where Israel leads, Italy follows…

Even without tourists around to spread the word, it seems the world is taking note of Israeli innovation in the rather unlikely field of ice cream production.

Just witness the success of Anita – a boutique-style chain in Tel Aviv that in recent years has spanned out across the globe. The family-run business, best-known for its salty bagel ice cream, already has three branches in Australia, one in Puerto Rico, one in New York (opened last year) and another in Barcelona (opened just two months ago). In the coming months, it plans to open additional branches in London, Limassol and Los Angeles.

“It’s hard to believe, but we’ve seen the Italians copying flavors from us,” says marketing director Adi Erez-Avital. Not yet available in its overseas branches is a flavor introduced this summer that has “Israel” and “Jewish” written all over it: za’atar (hyssop) crackers with cream cheese. Once you get used to the idea that ice cream doesn’t have to be super-sweet, it’s really quite delicious.

For anyone who grew up in Israel in the last century, when nondairy fat sources were commonly used as cheap substitutes for actual cream in the production of ice cream, it’s hard to overstate the change.

In those years, before brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs had made their way to Israeli supermarket shelves, the only “American” ice cream was something known as “glida amerikait” (American ice cream) – a generic name for soft-serve, which was generally limited to two flavors: vanilla or chocolate.

Store-bought, commercial brands typically came in rectangular-shaped boxes, and getting the ice cream out often required cutting into the cardboard. Bits and pieces would inevitably find their way into the serving dish or cone, so when Israelis would say their ice cream tasted like cardboard, it wasn’t just a metaphor.

Among the pioneers of the new movement favoring local and natural products was Buza (Arabic for “ice cream”), a small chain that took root less than 10 years ago in the northern Galilee. Its founders – Adam Ziv, a Jew from Kibbutz Sasa, and Alaa Sweetat, an Arab from the town of Tarshiha – are passionate about using products grown and produced in the north.

The syrup used in their malabi-flavored ice cream is made from raspberries grown in the Galilee and the Golan Heights; the lychees in their sorbet come from the Hula Valley, and the cream in their ice cream from a dairy in Kfar Tavor.

But their belief in localism goes beyond where they purchase their raw materials.

“Instead of cappuccino-flavored ice cream, we make ours with Arabic coffee and cardamom to give it a local twist,” Ziv says. Even their cones, he adds, incorporate local flavors like halva.

‘Whatever’s in season’

After learning to make ice cream in Milan and discovering that they loved it as passionately as diving, Sissi Pagani and her partner Marco Camorali packed up and moved to Israel in 2014. A year later, they opened Arte, conveniently located right next to Tel Aviv’s famous Carmel Market.

“Whatever’s in season and available at the market is what you get here,” she says, “which is why this a great time of year for our peach and lavender sorbet.” Not the best time for avocado ice cream, though, “so you’ll have to be patient,” Sissi adds.

Meanwhile, popular eatery Greco Deli has been experimenting with Greek-inspired flavors at its new pop-up ice cream shop in north Tel Aviv. A key takeaway from a recent visit is that Kalamata olive ice cream tastes much better than it sounds.

Back on the other side of town, Stefan Macher, an Austrian expat married to an Israeli, is trying out new flavors he believes will appeal to the Israeli penchant for sweet and salty combinations.

His latest concoction – jointly created with Israeli celebrity chef Yisrael Aharoni – draws its inspiration from, of all places, the Japanese kitchen: caramel-miso flavored ice cream. He insists that his customers love it.

Another relative newcomer to the local ice cream scene is Haifa-based Delicato Gelato, established by two more Italian immigrants – one fresh off the boat, the other an old-timer, but both from the Adriatic city of Pescara.

“What we try to do here is remain loyal to Italian tradition while adding a local twist,” says David Darom, the more veteran of the partners. By way of example, he cites two popular new flavors: coffee with arak; and orange infused with olive oil and black lava salt.

“I’m an engineer and my partner is an economist,” he says. “For both of us, this is less about making money and more a labor of love.”

At Jerusalem’s Variegato, the new line of local-inspired flavors includes olive oil, sea salt and honey drawn from avocado trees, as well as sheep milk yogurt, za’atar and honey drawn from the eryngo plant, which grows wild in the Negev. Neither are particularly sweet, but both are exquisite.

Variegato is one of 10 Jerusalem eateries owned and run by Levy, but the first focused exclusively on ice cream. “What I love about making ice cream,” he says, “is the freedom to go really crazy.”

Yusri Wawia, who owns and operates Sirmione Yogurt (which, despite the name, is more of an ice cream joint) in the central Arab town of Kalansaua, can definitely relate. What started as an attempt to get his finicky young daughter to eat vegetables developed into a line of herb-and-veggy-inspired ice cream and sorbet flavors.

“I tried to get her to eat a cucumber by mixing it into a melon-flavored ice cream I was making,” he recounts. “When I told her after that she had just eaten a cucumber, she didn’t believe me.”

Other popular combinations at the three-year-old scoop shop include pineapple and cilantro, orange and vanilla, cherry tomatoes and basil, smoked sweet potatoes with cinnamon and coconut, and – ready for this? – vanilla with onion confit.

“It’s great to be able to act on any crazy idea that comes into my head,” says Yusri, as he offers a customer a taste of a freshly whipped batch of beet sorbet.