HOW I WASTE MY DAY: Caffe Tazza d'Oro

When people hear that I've been living in Tel Aviv since July, they want to know what I'm doing here. How did I get here? Why do I stay? And, above all, what on earth do I do all day? I used to stumble over unconnected words as I concocted vague, half-hearted answers to these questions. But now I just answer simply and with a somberly serious, straight face: I'm building a cafe directory.

That's right. The official Tel Avivian Cafe directory. I'm a writer, I say, and I spend my days making the rounds from coffee shop to lunch place, always searching for the next best place to work and people watch. At each new cafe, I study the faces of the customers. The relationships between the waiters. I sit inside and then outside again. I eavesdrop on my neighbors' conversations. I order iced coffee because I'm too hot and then mint tea because I'm too cold. Occasionally, I eat a pastry.

Today, I am reveling in the air conditioning inside Caffe Tazza d'Oro at Ahad Ha'am 6 in Neve Tzedek. It is three fifteen in the afternoon. I've chosen the corner table because it's quiet and isolated with an outlet for my computer and a view onto the street. There are only two other tables occupied inside, although there's also a young guy sitting at the bar with a paper open in front of him and his moto helmet on a nearby bar stool. A young father with his infant daughter stand in the doorway, ordering takeout. The courtyard outside is, similarly, neither empty nor crowded and possesses the cheerily laid-back atmosphere of my favorite cafes in all sorts of capital cities along the Mediterranean. Chill out music plays at just the right volume. The walls are a happy yellow color that's been dotted with black and white photos of Pina Bausch performances. The bar boasts a plethora of the cafe's namesake coffee and also, surprisingly perhaps, an impressive selection of alcohol. I like this because my personal vision of heaven is a place where you can arrive for your caffeine fix in the morning and then stay long enough to drink a glass of dry white wine with your late lunch.

Unlike the waitstaff at so many places in this city, the four people working here actually smile when I walk in the door. And the second I finish my drink, a girl in her late twenties - who is friendlier than she is trendy (a welcome priority switch) - is asking me in English if I'd like anything else. What a relief to not have to fight for attention. The place achieves that delicate balance between being a neighborhood hangout and a serious business. Yes, everybody knows everybody and the waiters chat up a storm with eachother and the customers as they go about their work. But that's just it. They're actually doing their work. And their easy going attitudes somehow add, rather than subtract, from their efficiency. It's a sharp contrast to the waiters at Brasserie who I recently watched start a massage train in the middle of the restaurant while I tried desperately - and unsuccessfully - to get ahold of a clean fork.

Thus far, my favorite thing on the menu here is the chopped vegetable and chicken salad in Tahini and lemon. I'm highly aware that this sounds like standard Tel Avivian fare, but trust me when I say that the dressing is so remarkable that it has become nearly impossible for me to order this salad anywhere but here.

And then, of course, there's the coffee. This is the only place in Tel Aviv where you can get the Tazza d'Oro brand. And for anyone who doesn't know how significant a fact this is, I pity you. When my boyfriend and I were in Rome we stalked a Tazza d'Oro coffee shop near the Pantheon. We would quite literally walk in the opposite direction from our intended destination just so that we could have the sincere pleasure of hassling with the cafe's coked up staff members, fighting to get ahold of one, two, three tiny cups of espresso which we would then swallow like shots, standing up at an incredibly dirty, noisy counter and feeling better by the second. What a great Roman holiday. It's true that sometimes the quality of your day is determined by the quality of your coffee.

And people ask me what I'm doing here. Can they not guess that I am happier now than I've ever been during these past three years? Life is simple. Our needs are few. Contentment is far more easily reached than I ever imagined.

Drink good coffee.