In Israel, seven months out of the year are summer, sometimes even more. Winter is short and strong, bursts of wind and rain that can sweep you off your feet (especially in Jerusalem and the North), but blink twice and it’s summer again, and with it the incredible heat of the Middle East. It’s not easy to survive, even for locals. Just over the past weekend, temperatures in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area reached 36 degrees Celsius, and down south in the Negev and the Arava the temperature was close to 40.

As Israelis who have to deal with this extensive heat for most of their lives, we’ve come up with solutions that don’t just include sitting in air-conditioned rooms and taking cold showers. We have tastier, sweeter solutions. Through the decades, traditional sweets made room for more creative inventions, especially in the ice cream world. But alongside the new, there are still many times when you crave the old, classic treats you’ve eaten since you were a kid growing up in the nineties, and thankfully you can still find them in most kiosks and street corners.

The first one you may or may not want to land your hand on is our Israeli version of the slushy – ‘Barad’ ברד. Barad is a very, very sweet drink made of grated ice with a colorful syrup, ranging from dark red raspberry to yellow-marker lemon, and at times even an orangish mango flavor or an unnaturally blue blueberry. Barad is served in many kiosks and shops over the city, at small fairs and on ‘Independence Day’ late-night markets. You can spot the rectangular machines from afar, turning and blending the colorful icy mix. Some kids ask for one flavor, but those who know what’s best ask for a mix: raspberry-mango, blueberry-lemon. It may sound awful, and for sure it’s the least healthy option for a sweet drink, but boy does it cool you down in three seconds, in addition to a good, intense brain freeze.

Photo: Old Jaffa, Octavio Ruiz Cervera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Another traditional and wonderful sweet in all of the big cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Haifa, is Malabi. This sweet pudding originated in ancient Persia in the 7th century, and has been a traditional favorite around the Middle East for centuries. Essentially, it’s a pudding made of rice flour, milk, and sugar, topped with a red berry syrup, coconut, and crushed peanuts or pistachios. What’s perfect about Malabi is that it’s not heavy; you can eat it and still feel light and refreshed. It can also be not so sweet, depending on how much syrup you decide to put on top. When you get Malabi on the street or in a stall, it’s very cheap, fifteen shekels tops (in the right places), but in restaurants they might try to do a fancier version and charge you triple. Believe me, Malabi from Shuk Hacarmel or from Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa is all you need on a summer day.  

Now, we’ve finally arrived at the category of ice cream, which is plentiful. There are ice cream chains that are legendary in Israel, and I would like to mention three (I know, I know there are more, but it would be impossible to fit them all in one piece). The first and more “chainy” one that grew into a humongous scale is, of course, Golda. The story of Golda is an interesting one: 

Photo: Nizzan Cohen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Art by Dede.

In the 1990s, Anita Avital started making homemade ice cream in her apartment kitchen in Netanya for her family. Her children pushed her to sell her unique flavors at local food fairs, and in 2002 the family opened their first official storefront, named ‘Anita’, in Neve Tsedek in Tel Aviv. In 2012, Nir and Adi Avital wanted to take what their mother had built even further. They decided to launch ‘Golda’: a local offshoot of Anita Gelato, which they grew into a chain of over 140 stores nationwide. What really made the franchise famous is that in 2019, their chocolate pretzel flavor became customers’ favorite and has stuck around ever since. You can find Golda ice cream shops in almost every city today, and even in several gas stations.

Unlike Golda, though, some ice cream parlors chose to remain more boutique. In 2012, Adam Ziv from Kibbutz Sasa and Alaa Sweitat, a chef from the nearby village of Tarshiha, decided to open an ice cream shop together in the Western Galilee. They named their shop ‘Buza’, ice cream in Arabic. What began as one small shop grew slowly into five branches across the north, and one even travelled all the way down to Tel Aviv. Their goat cheese and fig flavor is the one people keep coming back for, a combination that sounds unlikely until you’ve actually tried it. 

‘Cassata’ came later, when chef Eyal Shani opened his own gelato place at Park Hamesila in Tel Aviv, and it quickly became known for flavors that read more like recipes than ice cream. There’s dark chocolate with rosemary and cream fraîche with sea salt and olive oil, along with other more “basic” flavors that cater to every want and crave. But the one that made ‘Cassata’ famous is the burnt marshmallow, which somehow manages to taste like it spent real time over an open fire.

If you have a sweet tooth, we’ve got you covered. Whether it’s a traditional Malabi, the nostalgic Barad, or an ice cream cone with a unique flavor you’ve never tried before, all will help you survive the Middle Eastern heat and are worth leaving your air-conditioned room for.