Delicatessen — Restaurant in Tel-Aviv

I love and I hate this place.

The kitchen: the food is great, and not out of line with TLV prices of slightly higher than what you’d pay elsewhere. That’s nice, considering how busy they are.

The staff are certainly above average, but only compared to the often disinterested servers at most Israeli eateries. Still, it’s all relative, so this counts as a positive.

The thing that sucks is their system. It’s really not customer friendly, and unless you embrace the local spirit of pushing and shoving a bit to cut to the front, you might wait a very long time to get any hot food or coffee. If you don’t opt to sit upstairs and instead take a table outside, you need to order inside.

Naturally, the food take 10-15 min to make but it’s so crowded, you’re forced to either clog the pick-up area (same area as the cash registers...which is a layout mistake) or wait outside defending your table. Unlike better organised restaurants, they don’t have a buzzer or number display system to let you know food is ready for pick-up. Unlike better service locations, they don’t give you a number stand for your table to have someone bus warm food to the tables.

They’ve opted instead to have no system at all. The first time I went inside and pushed my way to the front of the crowd to see if food was ready, they told me it needed ten more minutes. When I came back in 10min, the food was already cold, apparently sitting there for a while. It’s just unfortunately so disorganised in their front-of-house, that the good work of the kitchen gets a bit reduced in the time it takes for you to get to it. Of course, that’s not taking into account the massive pain in the butt it is to fight back forth through crowds shouting “is that one mine?!” at anyone who looks up from whatever admin work they have behind the counter.

Long story short, I’ve been here twice and both times I spent less money than I would have if ordering and pick up wouldn’t have been such a pain. I had to wonder if they don’t make it sloppy on purpose to give the feeling that there are a lot more people there than there would be if it worked efficiently; sort of like an empty club slowly letting people in, keeping the line out the door as an advertisement. The owners here are likely not in this for the money, but more likely are already well-off and just like the idea of owning a trendy spot for their image. If they cared about their profit (and their customers), they’d go take a look at better organised cafes, even an Aroma has a stronger concept when it comes to the customer ordering/service perspective.

Go to Delicatessen 100%, but go...

2022 edit - I love this new design as a deli where you can also get a large variety of freshly prepared dishes, pastries, sandwiches, cakes and different types of gourmet products and culinary tools. Recently bought one of their mini birthday cakes which was delightful.

2020 - This is a great deli, over the last few years we have ordered Our holiday dinner from them and also I’ve ordered a few deliveries of breads, salads and spreads - the food is really fresh, made from great ingredients and had a wonderful taste - it is really highly recommended. Also their desserts are so delicious you should definitely try one...

Our favorite daytime spot in Tel Aviv

Don't let the name fool you this is no ordinary deli, Delicatessen is a rustic and quaint spot that offers both dine in as well as take out, there are 2 seating areas, a patio on street level and an upstairs indoor area.

The staff and service is superb, matched only by the food they serve.

The menu changes but the food is consistently delicious, they also have excellent bread, cheese and wine selection.

Check out the photos and stop by because words alone cannot properly describe this...