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I Didn’t Know What I Was Looking For Until I Smelled It
I’ll be honest — I boarded that flight to Tel Aviv thinking I already knew what the food situation was going to be. Hummus. Falafel. Maybe some pita if I was lucky. I was not prepared. I was not spiritually equipped. I was a fool, and the city was about to educate me.
It started the way all my best meals start: not from a reservation, not from a guidebook, but from a smell that grabbed me by the collar and refused to let go. Cumin. Tomatoes. Something smoky and sweet and slightly dangerous. I followed my nose like a cartoon character floating toward a pie on a windowsill, and I have zero regrets.
Carmel Market, Early Morning, Zero Chill
The Carmel Market on a weekday morning is not for the faint of heart. It is loud, colorful, gloriously crowded, and absolutely teeming with vendors who will press a sample into your hand before you’ve finished blinking. I loved every chaotic second of it.
Tucked between a spice stall and a man selling the most aggressively orange mandarin oranges I have ever seen, there was a tiny café with maybe six tables. Each one had a cast-iron skillet sitting on it like a centerpiece, a round of bread on the side, and a person leaning over that skillet with the focused devotion of someone in prayer. That was my sign.
I sat down. A server appeared immediately, pointed at the skillet on the neighboring table, raised an eyebrow, and I said yes before she’d finished raising it. That is the level of decisiveness Tel Aviv will bring out of you.
The Shakshuka Arrives and I Briefly Forget My Own Name
What landed in front of me was a cast-iron skillet of shakshuka, still aggressively bubbling at the edges, smelling like every good decision anyone has ever made. The sauce was deep red — tomatoes slow-cooked down with peppers and onions and spices until it had transformed into something almost jammy. Nested in that sauce were eggs, whites just set, yolks still trembling and golden.
There was fresh bread on the side, thick and slightly charred on the bottom from the oven. A small bowl of labneh appeared without me asking. I scooped up a bite — sauce, egg yolk, bread — and I sat very still for a moment because my brain needed a second to process what had just happened to me.
Shakshuka is one of those dishes that sounds simple when you describe it. Eggs poached in spiced tomato sauce. Sure, fine, okay. And then you eat it and you understand that simplicity and ease are two completely different things, and this dish is proof of that distinction.
Where Shakshuka Comes From (It’s a Whole Journey)
I did what I always do — I started asking questions with my mouth still half-full, which my friend Tess would say is very on-brand for me. The café owner, a warm and patient woman who did not once make me feel bad about my terrible Hebrew, told me that shakshuka’s roots run deep through North Africa and the Middle East, with particularly strong ties to Tunisia and Libya.
It traveled with Jewish communities across generations and geography, landing in Israel where it became deeply woven into everyday food culture. It’s eaten at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner — it answers to no clock, which I respect enormously. Every family has their version. Every spice blend is a little different. That argument about whose shakshuka is best? It is ongoing, and I am told it may never be resolved.
What struck me most is how this dish carries history inside it — the movement of people, the adaptation of recipes, the way food becomes a kind of memory you can pass forward. That is not nothing. That is actually everything.
The Part Where the Bread Becomes Non-Optional
I want to spend a moment on the bread situation, because it is critical to the shakshuka experience and I will not skip it. You are not meant to use a fork and knife and eat this like a civilized person at a formal occasion. You tear the bread. You drag it through the sauce. You get it on your hands. That is the whole point.
My friend Henry — who is the most organized person I know and alphabetizes his spice rack — would absolutely hate the mess and secretly love every bite. I thought of him and smiled and then dragged another piece of bread through the skillet with zero remorse.
The café owner brought me a second round of bread without me asking. That is the universal language of a host who knows you need it. I accepted graciously and did not pretend otherwise.
What Tel Aviv Taught Me About Starting the Day
I wrote about how Cairo rearranged my whole morning philosophy over ful medames and flatbread — and if you haven’t read that one, Cairo Fed Me Breakfast and Rearranged My Whole Morning Philosophy is waiting for you. Tel Aviv took that same morning-food lesson and doubled down on it. Both cities are telling me something I think I’ve been too busy to hear back home: slow down, sit down, and eat something warm before you try to take on the world.
Shakshuka does not rush. You cannot make it rush. The tomatoes need time, the spices need to bloom, the eggs need to be watched and pulled at exactly the right moment. It is a dish that teaches patience by example, and if that is not a life lesson wrapped in a cast-iron skillet, I don’t know what is.
I sat in that Carmel Market café for nearly two hours. I ordered coffee. I watched the market happen around me. I was completely and utterly content. Tel Aviv, you got me good.
Now I’ve gone and brought the whole shakshuka situation home with me — skillet, spices, the whole deal. Head over to Gina’s Kitchen for the full recipe, because you deserve to make this on a slow weekend morning and feel like you’re sitting three tables from the spice stalls with the sun coming in sideways. Let’s cook.
If Shakshuka hit you the way it hit me, don’t miss Cairo Fed Me Breakfast and Rearranged My Whole Morning Philosophy — a completely different corner of the world, same kind of unforgettable bite.
Ready to make it yourself? Get Gina’s full Shakshuka recipe on Gina’s Kitchen.