Looking for a drink, we poked ours into a store called מזרח-מערב (East-West). Although we didn't find any drinks, we did find a surprise - the store was filled with international food products. They were mostly Asian; hence the name. The products they sold included soy sauces, chili sauces and pastes, all sorts of rice, rice noodles, nori, other sushi components (mats, pickled ginger, etc), and TONS of sushi-serving paraphernalia. We've since heard that they also carry some of the Western hot sauces we are used to, such as Goya's chili sauces made in Mexico, but we didn't notice them at the time, and I find it hard to believe that they would have escaped our view.
Although we excitedly bought some sushi rice and soy sauce, our excitement was tempered by a) the fact that, as it turns out, you can get a lot of these Asian ingredients in your average neighborhood Shupersol and b) the soy sauce was super sugary.
On that last note, make sure to look at soy sauce when you buy it in Israel. The Israeli brands will probably have sugar in them, so if you want normal soy sauce, look for a foreign brand, or check the ingredients. I can only speculate why the Israeli sauces are sweet; my guess is that soy sauce is seen as a condiment, and therefore sweet soy sauce is a tastier thing to dip food into than regular soy sauce. Indeed, most soy based dipping sauces are mixed with honey or another sweetner, and teriyaki sauce is simply sweetened soy sauce. Still, I find the sugar level of the Israeli stuff much too high, and the product overall unacceptable.
We plan to return to the East-West store. Although you can get some of their stuff locally, their selection is much larger. And maybe one day we'll get sushi platters and fancy engraved chopsticks!
For our next stop, I want to check out a store I've heard about where you can whole bean coffee or even (gasp) still-green unroasted coffee...
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