The Israeli Breakfast: How It Conquered the World

Ask anyone who has stayed in an Israeli hotel about the breakfast, and watch them smile. The "Israeli breakfast" - a long table of dozens of salads, cheeses, smoked fish, fresh breads, shakshuka and endless coffee - is famous far beyond the country. It did not start in hotels, though. It started on the kibbutz.

The early kibbutzim of the 1920s and 30s ran on communal dining rooms. Meat was scarce and refrigeration limited, so breakfast was dairy and vegetables: farmer's cheese, yogurt, eggs, olives, fresh vegetables, bread and jam. It was cheap, healthy and filling - and when Israel's first hotels wanted to impress European guests, they turned the kibbutz breakfast into theater. Today's hotel buffet can pass forty salads at a single meal.

The queen of the table is shakshuka: eggs poached in a pan of spiced tomato and pepper sauce, scooped straight from the skillet with bread. It came with North African Jewish immigrants, mainly from Tunisia and Libya, and is now the country's unofficial national breakfast. Order it "extra spicy" at your own risk.

Shabbat morning has its own stars. Jachnun, a rolled, buttery Yemenite dough baked overnight at low heat, is served with grated tomato, crushed egg and zhug hot sauce - a Saturday-morning ritual that fills Tel Aviv bakeries with lines. Its close cousin malawach, the flaky layered flatbread, appears with everything from honey to eggs.

The other secret: breakfast here is not a time of day. Cafes serve shakshuka and salads all day long, and a business meeting over a "business breakfast" is an Israeli institution. Between Tel Aviv's cafe terraces, Haifa's German Colony and the market stalls of Mahane Yehuda, we know the tables worth flying for - join a private tour and let us feed you properly.