Considered by many to be the best culinary city in Israel, Jerusalem offers a unique blend of amazing restaurants, bakeries, and cafes, featuring unique, world-class local and international cuisine. Here, you’ll find our list of the best restaurants in Jerusalem, including the most popular restaurants in the Jerusalem Market and city center, alongside some secret local places in quieter neighborhoods, all for the best culinary experience you can have in the magnificent city.
Best restaurants in Jerusalem
Hasadna (The Culinary Workshop)
The Culinary Workshop is one of the most family-friendly restaurants in the city, with a calm and elegant design, pleasant music, and solid and professional service. Any Jerusalem resident you ask where you can eat good meat in Jerusalem will direct you here, as the restaurant offers a creative combination of various popular meat dishes, alongside high-quality fish and seafood.
Talbiye
A Bistro with a European-French flavor located in the center of the Talbiye neighborhood and below the Jerusalem Theater. Here, you’ll find a menu that constantly changes depending on the supply of raw materials and the mood of the chef, who offers breakfast, lunch, and, dinner in a variety of styles, all with high quality and remarkable attention to detail.
Talbiye offers a great mix of cultures, on the one hand, it offers a breakfast based on Eija in chestnut bread with cream cheese, and on the other, Eggs Benedict on brioche with bacon. The mixing of styles also continues at lunch, when you can start with oysters and continue with Viennese schnitzel as a main dish, or at dinner, when you can order calamari with thyme and leek, followed by pork ribs in beer.
Sea Dolphin
Sea dolphin is the pioneer in the field of seafood in Jerusalem. Here you can find dishes that are rare in the Jerusalem landscape, such as seafood in white wine, scallops and shrimps in a cream sauce, fried crabs, black mussels, or fresh fish from a cooking method of your choice. It also features a selection of steaks and pastas and children’s dishes that make the place a great family restaurant.
Azura Restaurant
A popular Jerusalem institution located in the Iraqi part of the Machane Yehuda Market. What started as a small kitchen has expanded over the years into a large restaurant that serves Kurdish, Turkish, and Iraqi dishes cooked for hours on kerosene burners. Among the famous dishes are many types of Kubbeh, Turkish eggplant, and excellent hummus.
Best cafes in Jerusalem
Kadosh Cafe
A cafe and patisserie that is an old Jerusalem institution, featuring meticulous Parisian-level pastries and desserts, and a cafe menu with sandwiches, salads, and excellent dairy-based dishes.
Kadosh Cafe has a pleasant European charm and has long since become a must-visit spot in Jerusalem for local visitors, tourists from abroad, and numerous local Jerusalem residents who cannot start the morning without a croissant from here. Breakfasts are served all day, with the brioche and the bourekas being the most popular dishes, alongside the tarts, the eclairs, the fresh handmade pasta, and more.
Ofaimme farm cafe
Ofaimme farm cafe is a wonderful cafe and farm shop in the ancient hospital building of Hansen House. The tables here are scattered in a pastoral courtyard with pleasant spaces, the food is served on decorated ceramic plates, and all dishes are based on organic and sustainable ingredients – the vegetables are all locally-sourced, the goat cheeses are produced in the family’s farm in Wadi Araba, and the eggs come from the family’s farm in the nearby Valley of Elah. Those combine to make a fresh and delicious breakfast, great vegetarian dishes for lunch, and mouth-watering deli products such as honey, jams, brown bread, pastries, and artisanal cheeses to take home.
Grand Cafe
Grand Cafe offers excellent coffee, breakfast, sandwiches, and pastries with a Parisian vibe, all in a quiet, peaceful atmosphere. The cafe offers a variety of breakfast options, with the Eggs Benedict dish on offer being the most popular one. In addition, you can find several other great dishes here, such as sandwiches, salads, lasagna, pizzas, pasta, and even fish.
Best bakeries in Jerusalem
Russell’s Bakery
Russell’s bakery has made itself a huge name in Jerusalem, and for many good reasons. Apart from the use of only natural raw materials, it is famous for its working method, as the bread here is prepared in the French style, which means that the dough is placed in bamboo baskets so that it rises slowly and at its own pace. Here, you’ll find a huge selection of great bread, such as Olive and rosemary bread, grain bread, sunflower seed bread, spelt bread, flaxseed bread, nut bread, and more.
Nechama Bakery
A Persian bakery, which at first produced only Persian pita bread according to the traditional recipes of the grandfather of the bakery’s founder. The recipes were passed from father to son in the family, and there is still a place of honor for Persian pastries here, although the range of products has expanded since.
Nechama Bakery may not meet the definition of a luxury boutique bakery, but the richness and homely feeling of the place will already make you fill a bag of great pastries to take with you. Among other things, you will find here mini pretzels, whole wheat bread, baguettes, rye bread, quiches, pies, yeast cakes, muffins, croissants, strudels, milk cream cakes, and more, with most pastries made in a stone oven. Nechama Bakery has six branches in Jerusalem, making it easy to find during your visit to the city.
Ma’afe Ne’eman (Neeman Bakery)
The Neeman Bakery chain began in Jerusalem in 1944, when the family’s grandfather, the late Rabbi Baruch Ne’eman, began to bake pastries himself and sell them on top of a baby carriage in the city. Today, the Neeman Bakery chain has an plenty of branches in Jeursalem, including the Jewish Quarter, Jaffa Street, Davidka Square, Talpiot Neighborhood, King George Street, the Jerusalem Central Station, and many more. Among the variety of products, you’ll find here sourdough bread, cream-based cakes, mousses, pies, croissants, and Italian pastries such as pizza, calzone, and focaccia. Pro tip; try the bakery’s pistachio croissant, which is one of the best you can find in Israel.
