Gil Hov­av is Israel’s lead­ing culi­nary jour­nal­ist and a pop­u­lar TV per­son­al­i­ty. Gil has played a major role in the remak­ing of Israeli cui­sine and the trans­for­ma­tion of Israel from a coun­try of basic tra­di­tion­al foods into a ​“gourmet nation”. Gil has pro­duced some of Israel’s most pop­u­lar TV cook­ing shows and writ­ten a num­ber of best­selling cook­books and novels.

As an author, Gil has pub­lished three best-sell­ing nov­els, all relat­ed in dif­fer­ent ways, to his fam­i­ly’s col­or­ful his­to­ry, expos­ing with humor and emo­tion a Jerusalem of his child­hood that no longer exists. The fourth, titled Twen­ty Four Doors, was pub­lished in April 2015 and hit the top of the nation­al best­seller list. The first Eng­lish edi­tion, Can­dies from Heav­en was released in Novem­ber 2017. 

Nowa­days, Gil is busy with his pub­lish­ing and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny — Toad Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and with his week­ly radio show about restau­rants in Israel. His lat­est 20 episode TV series, ​‘Food for Thought’ includ­ed 20 inter­views with Nobel lau­re­ates, includ­ing John Nash, Elie Wiesel, Daniel Kah­ne­man, Eric Kan­del and many others.Gil lives with his part­ner Dan, whom he met dur­ing their army ser­vice, and togeth­er they raise their daugh­ter, Naomi.