Weizmann Canada Culinary Tour- November 2024

Activities:

• Meet in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel

• Conversation with Jay Shofet - Jay Shofet is the Director of Partnerships and Development at The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. Jay will talk about SPNI's programs, with a focus on science and innovation and their Healing in Nature project established in the wake of the events of October 7th.

• Food Tech at Asif: Culinary Institute of Israel - Meet some of Israel’s most innovative food tech startups, from a truffle grower in the Golan Heights to a world-class caviar company and the world’s most advanced science-assisted culinary vanilla enterprise. You will be hosted for a guided tour at Asif, a non-profit organization and culinary center in Tel Aviv dedicated to cultivating and nurturing Israel’s diverse and creative food culture. A joint venture of the New York City-based Jewish Food Society and Tel Aviv’s Start-Up Nation Central. Assif's projects developed to help those in need from the events of October 7 have impacted hundreds of thousands.

• Guided Tasting Tour of the Carmel Market with Adeena - A culinary tasting tour and cultural experience in the Carmel Market (Shuk HaCarmel), the largest market in Tel Aviv and Adeena’s backyard and daily stomping ground. Touring the market reveals the diversity of Tel Aviv’s food culture and culinary traditions. Meet Adeena’s friends in the market and hear her story of how the Carmel Shuk played a huge role in her acclimation to life in Israel and inspired her bestselling cookbooks, Sababa and Shabbat. Through the delicious authentic tasting tour, its secrets and legends will be revealed to you. (The tasting tour replaces lunch)

• Time to rest and freshen up

• Dinner at Abie Restaurant - Abie is not the first culinary revolution that talented chef Asaf Doktor has brought to Tel Aviv. The Dok restaurant that he opened with his brother Yotam in 2015 brought the obsession with the local Israeli kitchen into a particularly structured idea. The duo opened Ha'Achim (brothers) in 2011 and more recently, Abie. Abie is defined as a fresh Mediterranean restaurant, dining with friends in a casual, yet very of-the-minute, atmosphere.

• Overnight: Hilton Hotel - Not included

Activities:

• Breakfast at the hotel - Depart the hotel by 8:45 for an approximately one-hour drive.

• Olives and More Olives! - Every season has its own unique significance in the Galilee. Foraging wild greens in the winter, freekeh and zaatar in the spring, making bulgur and grinding sumac in the summer, grape harvesting and wine making in September. But the olive harvest has been the pinnacle of the agrarian calendar for over 3,000 years. Participate in the ancient traditions of the olive pick, with your hosts Snir and Mi'ad in Maghar village.

• -Arrive to the olive fields in the lower Galilee, not too far from the Kinneret, where we will be received with coffee and tea and then we'll get to work, beating the olives off the trees, gathering them from the mats on the ground and placing them in bags, ready to be transported to the olive press

• -Travel to the olive press where we will witness first-hand how the olives are processed into nature's liquid gold, understanding the process and learning the true meaning of "extra virgin" and "cold pressed". Of course, you'll go home with the greenest, freshest portion of olive oil you've ever tasted.

• Authentic vegetarian Druze lunch at Mi'ad and Snir's house. We will feast on delicious seasonal flavors, cooked by Mi'ad, from recipes that have been passed down through the generations for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

• Return to Tel Aviv to Prepare for Shabbat

• Shabbat Dinner with Chef Zack Fachiel - Fachiel, who grew up in Paris, will share his modern Shabbat cooking and his sing Shabbat and French songs with us

• Overnight: Hilton Hotel - Not included