White hot city

I t’s hard to imagine that behind the gritty streets, tooting horns and hellish traffic of Tel Aviv is a city at the forefront of high-tech innovation and venture-capital industry. Nicknamed Silicon Wadi, it has the largest number of start-ups per capita in the world, with young entrepreneurs dressed in T-shirts and thongs, building billion-dollar companies from their laptops while sipping espressos in cafés.

This innovation stretches to the city’s food scene, which is at the forefront of a new wave of modern Israeli cuisine. And the city is not only one of the most exciting places around the globe to eat, but it’s also been named the vegan capital of the world. Against Israel’s tense geopolitical landscape, coastal Tel Aviv is often criticised as existing in a bubble. It’s the resilience of its people, however, that’s led them to be described as sabras – the local prickly pear, with a tough skin that’s soft and sweet inside.

With a rich