Israel Food & Drink Kosher Meat (Basari)

The 10 Best Kosher Meat Restaurants in Israel (2026)

Updated August 2026 · 10 picks

The best kosher meat restaurants in Israel are Goshen in Tel Aviv and Black Iron and Jacko Street in Jerusalem, with Azura's kerosene-burner Iraqi stews the oldest and least changed of them. Basari kitchens serve no dairy at all, which shapes the whole menu. Ten certified meat restaurants across both cities, below.

The list at a glance

Goshen Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv
Black Iron Agripas Street, southern edge of Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem
Jacko Street City centre, Jerusalem
Azura Machane Yehuda market, Iraqi Market lane, Jerusalem
Red Heifer Steakhouse Just off King David Street, Jerusalem
Malka Menachem Begin Road, near the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Dvora Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv
Ishtabach Beit Yaakov Street, near Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem
2C Azrieli Round Tower, Tel Aviv
Shmulik Cohen Herzl Street, Florentin, Tel Aviv

1. Goshen — Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv

The city's benchmark kosher meat kitchen — a restaurant first, kosher second.

₪₪₪ UpmarketKashrut Rabbanut Tel Aviv

Goshen is the restaurant observant locals name when asked where to take someone for a serious dinner in Tel Aviv. It puts its dry-aging cabinet at the entrance, which tells you where the priorities lie: carefully sourced cuts, a short confident menu, and a room scaled for a dinner rather than a banquet.

That restraint is the distinguishing feature. A great many kosher meat restaurants in Israel are built for large family occasions, with the volume and menu length to match. Goshen reads as a Tel Aviv restaurant that happens to be kosher rather than the reverse, and it would hold its own on a street where nothing else was certified.

The Israeli wine list is a genuine strength and the right thing to lean on — domestic kosher wine has improved beyond recognition.

Good to know: Ask for an Israeli wine pairing — the domestic kosher list is far better than most visitors expect.

Google Maps Website

2. Black Iron — Agripas Street, southern edge of Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem

Israel's only all-wagyu kosher steakhouse.

₪₪₪₪ SplurgeKashrut Rabbanut Yerushalayim; much of the beef Chalak Beit Yosef

Black Iron's entire proposition is a response to the central difficulty of kosher meat. If permitted cuts are limited and the salting process firms the texture, then start from an animal with enough intramuscular fat that neither constraint can flatten it — which is exactly what wagyu provides.

The result is a steakhouse competing on the beef rather than on sauces, sides or theatre. Much of the meat carries Chalak Beit Yosef certification on the cuts as well as the restaurant's Jerusalem Rabbinate supervision, which widens the range of diners it works for.

It sits on Agripas Street at the southern edge of the Machane Yehuda market, so it folds naturally into an afternoon at the shuk.

Good to know: Ask which cuts came in that week — the wagyu selection rotates and the best are not always on the menu.

Google Maps Website

3. Jacko Street — City centre, Jerusalem

A Kurdish-rooted chef's kitchen doing the most interesting cooking in the centre.

₪₪₪ UpmarketKashrut Rabbanut Yerushalayim

Jacko Street is a chef-led restaurant working from Kurdish Jewish roots and pushing well past them — grilled meats, slow-cooked dishes and vegetable plates that treat a regional home-cooking tradition as the starting point for restaurant cooking rather than as a museum piece.

It occupies a useful middle ground in Jerusalem: more ambitious than the market counters, less formal and less expensive than the hotel dining rooms, and certified throughout.

It answers the question of where to have a real dinner in central Jerusalem without either queuing at the shuk or dressing for a hotel.

Good to know: Ask what is on as a special — the kitchen's best cooking tends not to be on the printed menu.

Google Maps

4. Azura — Machane Yehuda market, Iraqi Market lane, Jerusalem

Slow-cooked Iraqi and Kurdish stews, on kerosene burners since the 1950s.

₪₪ Mid-rangeKashrut Rabbanut Yerushalayim

Azura has been cooking in the Iraqi Market lane of Machane Yehuda since the 1950s, and its method has not changed: pots go on low kerosene burners early in the morning and cook slowly for hours until the food is ready.

The result is a menu of Iraqi, Kurdish and Balkan home cooking that has essentially disappeared from restaurants elsewhere — stuffed vegetables, slow-cooked lamb, the famous aubergine stuffed with meat and pine nuts, and a cinnamon-scented beef and rice.

It closes in the mid-afternoon when the pots run out, which tells you when to go. This is lunch, not dinner, and it is one of the most genuinely distinctive meals in the country.

Good to know: Lunch only — it closes when the pots are empty, usually mid-afternoon. Go early.

Google Maps

5. Red Heifer Steakhouse — Just off King David Street, Jerusalem

A New York-style steakhouse run by a New York butcher, glatt mehadrin.

₪₪₪₪ SplurgeKashrut Glatt kosher lemehadrin under Rav Rubin

Red Heifer sits just off King David Street and was opened by Yossi Wanch, who worked as a butcher in New York and ran a restaurant in Manhattan before bringing the format to Jerusalem.

That background shows in the approach: this is a New York steakhouse rather than an Israeli grill, with the emphasis on the cut, the char and the sides rather than on a long mezze table. It is certified glatt kosher lemehadrin under Rav Rubin, a stricter standard than the basic Rabbinate certificate.

The King David area puts it within walking distance of the main hotels and of the Old City, which makes it one of the more convenient serious meat dinners for visitors.

Good to know: Mehadrin under Rav Rubin rather than basic Rabbanut — useful if you keep to a stricter standard.

Google Maps

6. Malka — Menachem Begin Road, near the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

A polished meat-and-fish kitchen in the museum quarter.

₪₪₪ UpmarketKashrut Rabbanut Tel Aviv

Malka sits on Menachem Begin Road near the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, in the part of the city given over to cultural institutions and office towers rather than nightlife. That shapes the room: calmer and smarter than most kosher meat restaurants, drawing a business and pre-theatre crowd alongside families.

The kitchen works across meat and fish with more polish than the Israeli kosher average, which makes it the sensible choice when the occasion needs a restaurant that looks the part — an anniversary, a client dinner, or a meal before a concert.

Because the quarter empties in the evening, a weeknight table here is easier to get than at the equivalent restaurant in the centre.

Good to know: Well placed for the museum, the opera house and the Cameri — pair dinner with whatever is on.

Google Maps

7. Dvora — Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv

Middle Eastern cooking taken seriously, in the Old North.

₪₪₪ UpmarketKashrut Rabbanut Tel Aviv

Dvora is a meat and fish kitchen on Ben Yehuda working in a Middle Eastern register — the grill, the mezze table, slow-cooked dishes — but pitched well above the neighbourhood grill standard that dominates this style in Israel.

It is a useful reminder that kosher meat cooking is on home ground here. Levantine food was never built around butter and cream, so a basari kitchen working in this tradition gives up almost nothing, unlike one attempting French or Italian technique.

Ben Yehuda in the Old North is walkable from most of the northern hotels, which makes it practical for visitors as well as residents.

Good to know: Order broadly across the mezze — the small plates are where this kitchen is strongest.

Google Maps

8. Ishtabach — Beit Yaakov Street, near Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem

Kurdish stuffed shamburak pastries — one dish, done exceptionally well.

₪₪ Mid-rangeKashrut Rabbanut Yerushalayim

Ishtabach is built around the shamburak, a stuffed pastry from the Kurdish Jewish tradition: dough wrapped around slow-cooked lamb, beef or vegetables and baked until the outside crisps and the filling collapses into it.

It is a single-idea restaurant, and that focus is exactly why it works. The kitchen makes a small number of things and makes them properly, which is a more reliable route to a good meal than a long menu covering every base.

The room is small, communal and informal, just off the market. It suits a quick, substantial, inexpensive meal, and it is one of the more distinctive things you can eat in Jerusalem.

Good to know: The lamb shamburak is the one to order first — it is what the kitchen is built around.

Google Maps

9. 2C — Azrieli Round Tower, Tel Aviv

A meat kitchen on the 49th floor, with the whole city underneath it.

₪₪₪₪ SplurgeKashrut Rabbanut Tel Aviv

2C occupies the top of the Azrieli Round Tower, and the view is the reason most people book: Tel Aviv laid out from the sea to the suburbs, best at dusk when the lights come on.

It is a certified meat kitchen and steakhouse, which makes it one of very few places in Israel where a spectacular setting and a kashrut certificate come together. For a celebration where the room has to do some of the work, that combination is hard to replace.

Book a window table specifically — the difference between a window seat and an interior one is most of the experience.

Good to know: Ask for a window table when booking, and aim for sunset rather than later.

Google Maps

10. Shmulik Cohen — Herzl Street, Florentin, Tel Aviv

Ashkenazi home cooking that has outlasted almost everything around it.

₪₪ Mid-rangeKashrut Mehadrin

Shmulik Cohen on Herzl Street is an old-fashioned Ashkenazi restaurant of a kind that has almost disappeared from Tel Aviv — chopped liver, stuffed neck, gefilte fish, cholent, the eastern European Jewish repertoire cooked without apology or reinvention.

It holds a mehadrin certificate and has been feeding the same neighbourhood for generations. In a city that rebuilds itself every decade, a restaurant serving this food to this standard is a genuine survivor rather than a nostalgia exercise.

It suits anyone curious about what Jewish food in Israel looked like before the modern Israeli kitchen arrived, and it is considerably cheaper than the chef restaurants above.

Good to know: Go for the old Ashkenazi dishes rather than the grill — the classics are the reason this place still exists.

Google Maps

Frequently asked questions

What is a kosher meat restaurant?

A basari (fleishik) kitchen: meat and poultry, no dairy anywhere on the premises, and a waiting period after eating before dairy. In practice this means no butter, no cream and no cheese, which is why kosher meat cooking leans on oil, tahini, stock and smoke instead — and why the good ones are very good at those.

What is glatt kosher?

Glatt refers to the lungs of the slaughtered animal being free of adhesions — a stricter standard than basic kosher slaughter. In Israel it is close to standard at mehadrin-certified meat restaurants. It says nothing about the quality of the cooking, only about the supervision of the meat.

Which is the best kosher steakhouse in Israel?

Black Iron in Jerusalem is the only all-wagyu kosher steakhouse in the country, and Red Heifer is the New York-style option run by a New York butcher. In Tel Aviv, Goshen is the benchmark kosher meat kitchen — a serious restaurant that happens to be certified, rather than the reverse.

Why is kosher meat expensive in Israel?

Kosher slaughter, salting and inspection add cost, and the hindquarter of the animal is largely not used in Israel because of the sciatic-nerve rule, so the same carcass yields less usable steak. Expect to pay a real premium over a non-kosher steakhouse for the equivalent cut.

Do kosher meat restaurants in Israel open on Shabbat?

No — certification requires closing from Friday afternoon until Shabbat ends. Many reopen Saturday night, and Thursday night is the busiest service of the week. Hotel dining rooms serve over Shabbat on a pre-prepared, no-cooking basis, which is a different experience.

Can you get a kosher meat meal on a Friday in Israel?

Friday lunch, yes, and it is a significant service — restaurants fill from noon and close mid-afternoon. Friday night dinner outside a hotel is essentially not available in the certified sector. If you want a Friday-night meal out, book a hotel dining room in advance.

1. Goshen — Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv

2. Black Iron — Agripas Street, southern edge of Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem

3. Jacko Street — City centre, Jerusalem

4. Azura — Machane Yehuda market, Iraqi Market lane, Jerusalem

5. Red Heifer Steakhouse — Just off King David Street, Jerusalem

6. Malka — Menachem Begin Road, near the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

7. Dvora — Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv

8. Ishtabach — Beit Yaakov Street, near Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem

9. 2C — Azrieli Round Tower, Tel Aviv

10. Shmulik Cohen — Herzl Street, Florentin, Tel Aviv

Frequently asked questions

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