Jerusalem eats: Tasty breakfasts in the Holy City

They say the Israeli breakfast is the best in the world. And I was tasked with finding the finest Israeli breakfasts in Jerusalem.

What is it about the country’s signature smorgasbord of salads, omelets, cheeses, breads and pastries that brings so much happiness to people from all around the world? Is it the fusion of locally sourced colors and flavors? The history and variety of the dishes? Or is it the pace of the smorgasbord itself?

I had a lot of opportunities to philosophize about the meaning of the most important meal of the day as I visited some of the Holy City’s best cafés to sample their morning meals. And I think the Israeli breakfast represents a certain way of life.

It’s not just the food itself. I don’t think most people salivate when they imagine dipping their slice of bread into a small bowl of freshly made tehina or labaneh cheese. And the thought of chowing down on a plate of scrambled eggs with herbs and mushrooms isn’t the visceral experience that I enjoy when I bite into a great burger. But the presentation of all of these elements together in the right way gives the Israeli breakfast the power to create a luxurious oasis of time where every bite is a pleasure and calories don’t matter.

Decisions like “Should I dip my next bite of bread into the olive spread or the avocado dip?” feel effortless when whiling the hours away with friends or loved ones. Don’t bother ordering a platter like this if you’re in a hurry – the pace just doesn’t work.

My wife, my sister or my mom joined me on each of my breakfast-sampling excursions (except one), because to me breakfast is more of a girl thing than a guy thing. Either way, it’s definitely a great morning date.

Each of the eateries we sampled provided us with complimentary meals, but the most fun part of researching an article like this isn’t the free food. It’s the opportunity to speak with the owner or manager of each place and learn about their history and what they want to offer that others don’t.

I’ve heard some people suggest that complimentary food corrupts restaurant reviews, but my experience is the opposite: that cooperating with the management helps me get a much richer experience to share with readers. So I hope you’ll allow yourself to live vicariously through me as I eat my way through the city.

All restaurants are kosher with rabbinate supervision unless otherwise noted. It should also be mentioned that we didn’t visit any hotel breakfast buffets, which are a whole different category.

 

We start our journey with a new kid on the block. Café Oranim opened in the San Simon neighborhood in March in the spot formerly occupied by Café Luigi, just as Israel was coming out of its last coronavirus lockdown.

My wife Sara and I knew that the spot had a large garden, but we are surprised at how inviting the new owner had made it. The owner, Elad, says this was central to his vision for the venue.

“The goal was to create a beautiful pastoral garden restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem,” Elad says. “There are outdoor seating areas on both sides of the restaurant, ample parking and even a small area for dogs to be let loose. We can host events for groups of all sizes.”

Sara and I start daydreaming about planning our daughter’s bat mitzvah here. 

Elad also owns an event hall in Talpiot, and has extensive experience in Jerusalem’s food industry. He invested heavily in fixing up the place and hiring a top chef from one of Jerusalem's most upscale hotels. But he had plenty of time to prepare for the opening – he signed on the location just weeks before the coronavirus crisis began last winter, and then let it lie fallow for more than a year before things began reopening.

Elad knows he will have to work hard to stand out in the Jerusalem scene, and he aims to deliver.

Breakfast is brought out in colorful Jerusalem-vintage-style dishes, and our various salads are spread out on a small platform the waiters set up on the table, saving valuable space and making the experience feel even more royal.

The fare is the classic Israeli breakfast we are expecting – eggs, bread, salads, a cold drink during the meal, a hot drink after – served in large, generous portions.

The food is solid, although no individual item stands out as being exceptional. But as a lovely place to sit, Oranim is a big winner.

If any place in Jerusalem can compete for pastoral views, it’s our next location, Café Gan Sipur. It opened in 2018 in arguably the best location in the city – at the top of Gan Sacher, its most popular park.

Café Gan Sipur is an interesting restaurant concept. The chain has several branches located in large scenic parks around the country, and it maintains a literary theme and feel throughout. Each branch is large, spacious and surrounded by nature, and several of the dishes on the menu are named in reference to classic Israeli books. (Would you like a “strange sandwich from Kfar Azar?”)

The Jerusalem venue has trees growing in the center of the dining area and hanging plants everywhere. Reading hours for children are scheduled each week, and bookshelves line the café’s walls.

Of course, many diners don’t even bother sitting inside anymore. During coronavirus, the café began offering takeaway picnic baskets customers could take and eat on the grounds of the park. This was a big hit and will likely remain, says Rafi, one of the Jerusalem branch’s co-owners.

My sister Jessica joins me on this visit to celebrate her birthday, and as the café was still in the process of reopening after coronavirus, we find out that the regular breakfast menu isn’t yet available. (It has since been restored.) That means we have to order from the dinner menu. Tough luck!

We might have gone a little bit overboard. We start by sharing an enchilada filled with mushrooms, sweet potato, mozzarella cheese, spinach and onions.

My first reaction upon tasting the first bite is, “Wow, these guys know what they are doing.”

This is followed by sweet potato gnocchi filled with rich goat cheese and the Nechama salad with halloumi cheese and mushrooms.

We also get the milkshakes Café Gan Sipur is known for. I have the lotus shake with caramel and pecans, and Jessica goes for the iced acai drink. Everything is incredible, and we are bursting at the seams.

As at most of the cafés we visit, there are plenty of vegan options, although when we compare the vegan halloumi cheese to the real thing, it isn’t really close.

As we are about to leave, Rafi insists we taste the restaurant’s flagship dish, the black forest pasta. This is an uncommon dish made with black pasta (colored with zinc), with a cream and teriyaki sauce and caramelized onions that Rafi says attracts attention from all over the world. A storybook ending!

We move now from the pastoral to the urban. Nocturno, straddling Nahlaot and the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, is one of the city’s hippest cafés. It seems like most times I have visited in the past, I’ve crossed paths with local celebrities and city council members.

Owner Amit Schechter joined Nocturno at age 16 as one of its first workers, and is now the sole owner at age 40. He has continued to develop the place into more than just a café.

Go down the stairs and you’re in Nocturno Live, a cabaret-style event hall that continued to host live concerts even through the pandemic, one of the only such places in the center of town. (It’s also available for events.)

Go upstairs and you’re in Nocturno’s Designer District with shops featuring trendy locally-made clothing and art – and also a kosher sex toy shop.

“It is important for us to be part of the larger community we serve,” Schechter says. “People come from all over the country for this. We’re also known for our great and unique vegan and vegetarian dishes.”

Seating for diners is outside, inside or up in a small loft inside, overlooking the crowd. Customers are reading newspapers, working on laptops and meeting friends. There’s an exciting vibe.

My wife and I are served two large breakfasts. The Nocturno breakfast (for two) comes with a lot of bread and good salads, including smoked salmon and smoked tuna. The French breakfast has a brioche with smoked salmon and a fried egg on top, and a side dish of stir-fried mushrooms and potatoes. We pass on the shakshuka, even though it’s one of the café’s trademark dishes. It’s a lot of food, and very good.

I debated whether to include this relatively new neighborhood café on the list of Jerusalem’s top breakfasts. Founded two years ago by Avraham and his partner, two olim from France, it doesn’t stand out as you pass it on the street.

“We wanted to create a mehadrin place in Rehavia that is very French, with a lot of butter and cheese, for locals to come and enjoy a coffee and pastry in a European atmosphere,” Avraham says.

Indeed, the food is quite unusual.

We start off with a pain suisse, a light and flaky Swiss pastry.

“Israelis like their pastries warmed up, but the French eat it at room temperature,” Avraham explains as he serves us.

My wife orders a Gouda croissant, while I get the standard breakfast with eggs, bread and salads. My favorite of the salads, surprisingly, is the pickled lemon spread, which I almost never eat. This perhaps says something about the choice of salads served, but also gives me a new appreciation for this pungent type of spread.

For dessert, we order the tiramisu, which also surprises us because it is more like a French pastry than the mousse-y style of the delicacy most Israeli cafés serve.

A mixed bag, but we left happy we had come.

Naadi was hands down the biggest surprise of this whole food adventure.

Founded 14 years ago, Shai, the owner, moved it last year from nearby Shatz Street to lower Hillel Street, in the new student dormitory building next to the Brown Hotel.

Shai insists his busy café is well known among English-speaking Jerusalemites, although not all of my friends agreed with that statement.

Shai offers my sister Jessica and me the upgraded Sadan breakfast (for two), as well as the green shakshuka.

When the food arrives, I’m a bit shocked at the scope of what we are offered. The breakfast is served on a large tray with a lot of things that I haven’t seen before. Most striking are the big chunk of smoked tuna and a few types of fancy cheeses, along with a really tasty and colorful variety of 14 salads, including different kinds of pestos and tapenades, jams, tehina and cream cheeses. Other roasted vegetables also garnish the tray.

This is something special.

“This is the kind of Israeli breakfast I’ve always dreamed of,” I exclaim to Jessica, as I sample several hard cheeses.

If breakfast is about a luxurious oasis in time, this spread is more luxurious than any I’ve seen at any restaurant until now. The price tag may be high, but we have a clear leader in our hunt for the best breakfast.

How to make a great food adventure even more exciting? Add a celebrity guest appearance from one of Jerusalem’s favorite foodies.

Har Homa resident Shimshon Sam Leshinsky recently became a local legend when he started posting his restaurant reviews on the Secret Jerusalem Facebook group last year. His posts now get hundreds of comments, and he has quickly developed a very strong following.

Leshinsky invites me to collaborate reviewing Cafe Lyon, just adjacent to the Mahaneh Yehuda market, along the light rail tracks on Jaffa Road.

He insists we split the Eggs Benedict breakfast, with smoked salmon and poached eggs on toasted challah with a delightful Hollandaise creamy sauce and a side salad.

I haven’t been a fan of Eggs Benedict before, but this experience with Leshinsky turns me on to it. And he and I have a great time discussing breakfast while we watch the center of the city come to life in the morning.

The café, located where Trattoria Haba was until last year, is owned by two ambitious young Israelis, Bar and Aviah, who met working at the Rishon Lezion branch of Café Lyon and decided to invest in their own branch. They have big plans for expanding throughout the city in the future.

Leshinsky, as is his style, insists on paying for everything we ate, but after he leaves Aviah insists on slipping me a slice of her mille-feuille cake, with flaky dough and vanilla cream. Delicious.

But will I ever see Leshinsky again? Stay tuned...

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Located on the gorgeous grounds of Jerusalem’s storied old leper colony, Hansen House has become one of Jerusalem’s trendy cultural centers since it was reopened by the municipality in 2009.

The on-site café run by the Ofaimme organic farm had become a popular place for eco-friendly dining before coronavirus, and while indoor dining is still not allowed as of this writing, the option to take away food and sit in the park is quite popular.

My attempts to arrange a visit with the owner strangely failed, but my wife and I stop by with our son on a recent Friday morning for breakfast croissants and a vegan chocolate muffin.

We sit in one of the pleasant outdoor spots in the garden and watch dozens of others grab their coffees and picnic baskets. A one-of-a-kind spot in Jerusalem.

Kadosh has been in operation since 1967, but it is only during the past few years that it has started to be recognized, the manager, Or, tells me.

The founder, Meir Kadosh, died and left the business on to his son, Itzik, and Itzik’s wife, Keren, who have run it for the past 23 years or so. Keren is now in charge of desserts, while Itzik focuses on the pastries, Or says.

“When I started here six years ago, this was more of a neighborhood café for locals,” Or says. “But in the past two or three years, it has become more popular because we’ve been in the news.”

Kadosh’s breakfast has recently been named the best in Jerusalem by the Hebrew press, and its Hanukkah sufganiyot (doughnuts) have also won several holiday competitions, including The Jerusalem Post’s annual review.

“Since then, the business has doubled,” Or reveals.

Kadosh was also in the news recently when it decided to drop the rabbinate’s kashrut supervision in favor of an independent kashrut supervisor, Tzohar. That made it Tzohar’s most well-known client, and was a big boost to Tzohar, which has been working for years to break the rabbinate’s monopoly on kosher certification.

As I visit, the place is packed, and a line to be seated develops while I eat. Nearly every day is like this, Or notes. And it isn’t just because the café is situated across the street from the Interior Ministry.

I break a few of my own rules on this visit. I come by myself, I am in a bit of a hurry, and instead of the Israeli breakfast, I order a special that includes golden eggs (poached eggs fried with kadaif noodles), a croissant, smoked salmon, mascarpone cheese and a salad.

The golden eggs are a bit strange, but the taste grows on me the more I eat.

For dessert, my waitress recommends the pecan brioche filled with cream, with gold-colored pecans on top. Excellent.

Caffit is another of Jerusalem’s favorite and most iconic restaurant chains. I’ve been a fan ever since I tasted its flagship Oreganato dish, a salad served with golden sweet potato strips, mushrooms, croutons and Bulgarian cheese.

Caffit’s branch on Emek Refaim Street is one of that neighborhood’s trendiest meeting spots, while the branch at the Botanical Gardens, overlooking the pond, is one of the capital's most beautiful dining spots.

But since I am having breakfast with my mother, who has just arrived in the Old City, we meet at the mehadrin Shlomzion Hamalka branch, kitty-corner from the Mamilla Mall.

Arnon, owner of the Shlomzion Hamalka branch, says his location makes the café ideally situated for tourists.

“We work with a lot of nearby hotels that don’t have their own cafeteria, as well as a dozen vacation rental homes,” he says. “The owners give their guests vouchers to come here for breakfast every morning. But that also means we are particularly dependent on tourism, and during the past year, that has been very hard."

“Shakshuka is our most popular dish among visitors,” Arnon notes. “When a tourist wants to eat real Israeli food, he sees shakshuka on the menu and he gets it. They see that as the most authentic local cuisine.”

We split the worker’s breakfast (for two), with fried eggs served over hearty potatoes and onions, for a filling main course.

A large pitcher of orange juice comes to our table, along with two hot drinks in the end.

The salad selection is somewhat standard, with some interesting salads of mozzarella cheese, harissa and chickpeas. A nice, filling, and somewhat original variation on the classic Israeli breakfast.

Just as I’d finished reviewing all the places on my list, Leshinsky appeared again and invited me and In Jerusalem Editor Erica Schachne to have breakfast together at one of Jerusalem’s classic cafés.

My memories of Tmol Shilshom are primarily a bunch of bad first dates I had there in the early 2000s. But nestled in a small side street off Yoel Moshe Salomon Street for 26 years, the one-time center of Jerusalem’s literary scene remains a relevant part of the restaurant scene.

The interior of the venue looks exactly as I’d remembered it, filled with bookshelves and bohemian-style furniture.

The restaurant’s iconic founder, David Ehrlich, died unexpectedly last year of a heart attack at age 61, and the restaurant has struggled to survive that loss and a year of coronavirus closures. (A crowdfunding campaign last year, spearheaded by a dedicated community of friends, helped keep the place from closing.)

But the indoor and outdoor tables are full during our visit, and a tour group of students piles in for brunch as we are finishing up.

We split the Mediterranean Shakshuka and an Israeli salad, served simply but with flavor.

Dessert is more impressive, as Leshinsky splurges on slices of cheesecake and an incredible crack pie made of oatmeal cookie crust and a butter and brown sugar filling.

More than enjoying the food, we enjoy the restaurant’s history, the memories and great company together.

AS I concluded my journey, I felt bad I couldn’t include so many places that friends had recommended, including Café Denya, Piccolino, Nahman, Grand Café and the fabulous Derech Hagefen, situated 20 minutes outside the capital.

While I enjoyed the breakfast at Naadi Café the most, and had a great overall experience eating dinner food for breakfast at Café Gan Sipur, every place on our list of the top breakfasts had its own unique story and charm. The experience of eating in a pastoral garden setting is very different from sitting in the city, watching the nearby businesses come to life.

I acquired an appreciation for Eggs Benedict, pickled lemon salads and the variety of ways a good Israeli breakfast can be presented.

And, perhaps most importantly, I learned that a good breakfast is meant to be shared.