Jerusalem Food & Drink Emek Refaim & German Colony

The 11 Best Restaurants on Emek Refaim & the German Colony (2026)

Updated October 2026 · 11 picks

The best restaurants on Emek Refaim are Caffit for a kosher dairy meal, Joy and Roza for grill and steak, Pompidou for Italian, Marvad Haksamim for Yemenite food and Focaccia Moshava for taboon bread. Grand Cafe does the area's best brunch, and Hasadna and Talbiye are the non-kosher exceptions. Eleven, below.

1. Caffit — 36 Emek Refaim

The cafe that started the street in 1987, and still its default kosher dairy meal.

₪₪ Mid-range

Caffit opened on Emek Refaim in 1987 and is credited with starting the street's food culture — before it, this was a residential neighbourhood with a greengrocer. It is kosher dairy, it is always busy, and it is the place locals default to when nobody has a preference.

The menu is broad: taboon-oven pizzas, pasta, big salads, fish and a full Israeli breakfast, with the long-standing sweet potato oreganato as the dish people order out of habit and loyalty.

It is a restaurant to eat at rather than to make a pilgrimage to, and that is its value — four decades of consistency on the street's best corner, with pavement tables under the trees.

Good to know: Breakfast or lunch outside under the trees. Order the sweet potato oreganato once, for the history if nothing else.

Google Maps Website

2. Joy — 24 Emek Refaim

The street's serious kosher meat restaurant — kebabs, steaks and burgers done properly.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Joy, at 24 Emek Refaim, is the street's grill: a kosher meat restaurant from chef Aviram Dotan's kitchen, strong on kebabs, steaks and burgers, and the obvious answer when the dairy cafes either side will not do.

The cooking is Israeli grill rather than steakhouse formality — mezze first, then meat over fire — and the quality is better than the street's casual character suggests.

It is also one of the few places on Emek Refaim that works as a proper dinner rather than a long lunch, and it fills up accordingly on Thursday and Saturday nights.

Good to know: Mezze and kebabs over the steaks for value. Saturday night, after Shabbat goes out, is the street's busiest sitting.

Google Maps

3. Grand Cafe — Derech Beit Lehem

The German Colony's best brunch, one street off the main strip.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Grand Cafe sits on Derech Beit Lehem, the quieter parallel street a block from Emek Refaim, and it is the neighbourhood's brunch destination — a modern brasserie with an Israeli, French and American menu and the kind of room that encourages you to stay for a second coffee.

Being off the main strip is part of the appeal: the pavement is wider, the traffic is lighter, and the crowd is more local.

It works as well for dinner as for brunch, but brunch is what people come for and what it is best at.

Good to know: Brunch rather than dinner, and go on a weekday if you can — the weekend sittings here are the neighbourhood's busiest.

Google Maps Website

4. Pompidou — 27 Emek Refaim

A kosher dairy Italian bistro with two balconies over the street — the best seats on Emek Refaim.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Pompidou, at 27 Emek Refaim, is a kosher dairy bistro leaning Italian, and its real asset is architectural: two balconies overlooking the street, which are the best tables in the German Colony and the hardest to get.

The cooking is pasta, pizza, fish and salads done with more care than the category usually implies, and the room inside is handsome in the Jerusalem-stone way.

It suits a long dinner more than a quick stop, and in spring and autumn the balconies make it the most pleasant evening on the street.

Good to know: Ask for a balcony table when you book. They are the point, and they go first.

Google Maps

5. Marvad Haksamim — 42 Emek Refaim

Yemenite cooking — the jachnun, malawach and soups the street was built on.

₪₪ Mid-range

Marvad Haksamim — the Magic Carpet — at 42 Emek Refaim serves the Yemenite and Middle Eastern food that is the deepest root of Jerusalem's own cooking: malawach, jachnun, kubbeh and soups, alongside grilled meat.

It is the least fashionable restaurant on this list and one of the most useful. Yemenite food is designed to be filling and warming, and on a cold evening in a stone city at 800 metres that is exactly the correct choice.

Order the breads and the soups rather than the mains, and take the schug seriously.

Good to know: Malawach with grated tomato and schug, plus a soup, is the order. Skip the mains.

Google Maps

6. Focaccia Moshava — 35 Emek Refaim

Eight kinds of taboon-baked focaccia, and the most child-proof table on the street.

₪₪ Mid-range

Focaccia Moshava at 35 Emek Refaim is built around its taboon oven and the eight varieties of focaccia that come out of it, which arrive hot, oiled and covered in whatever you chose.

Beyond the bread there is a broad menu of grills, pasta, fish and salads — the standard Israeli neighbourhood restaurant repertoire — but the bread is the reason to pick it.

With children it is the easiest meal on Emek Refaim: the focaccia arrives within minutes, which solves the first twenty minutes of any family dinner.

Good to know: Order two focaccias for the table before anything else. It buys you the time to read the rest of the menu.

Google Maps

7. Bruno — Emek Refaim

The meat sandwiches that built a following on a side street and then outgrew it.

₪₪ Mid-range

Bruno began on Derech Beit Lehem with a reputation for meat sandwiches and moved onto Emek Refaim into a bigger room as the following grew, which in this neighbourhood is the clearest possible verdict.

The sandwiches are the thing: slow-cooked and grilled meat, properly dressed, in bread that holds up — the kind of food that is easy to do badly and is done well here.

It is a lunch and early-evening place rather than a dinner destination, and it is among the best value on the street.

Good to know: Go for the sandwiches rather than a plated main. That is what it is good at and what the queue is for.

Google Maps

8. Roza — German Colony

A quieter kosher meat restaurant for when the street's grills are full.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Roza is a kosher meat restaurant in the German Colony and the alternative to Joy when Joy is booked out, which on a Saturday night it will be.

It is a smaller and lower-key operation, which some people prefer: the German Colony's restaurants can be very loud on a weekend evening, and a quieter room with competent grilling is a real option rather than a consolation.

Worth having on the list when you are deciding on the night rather than planning a week ahead.

Good to know: The sensible second call on a Saturday night when the street's better-known grills have no tables.

Google Maps

9. The Coffee Mill — Emek Refaim

A tiny coffee specialist with the widest custom-brewed selection in Jerusalem.

₪ Budget

The Coffee Mill is a very small cafe on Emek Refaim that takes coffee more seriously than anywhere else in the neighbourhood, with a long list of beans brewed to order and a room that seats barely a dozen people.

It is the opposite of the street's big cafes: no breakfast menu to speak of, no pavement sprawl, just coffee and a pastry, done by people who care about the first of those.

Go when you want a good cup rather than a meal — and go at an off hour, because there is nowhere to wait.

Good to know: Ask what they are brewing by hand that day. There are only a few seats, so avoid the breakfast rush.

Google Maps

10. Hasadna — Hebron Road, five minutes away

The neighbourhood's most ambitious kitchen — non-kosher, and open on Shabbat.

₪₪₪₪ Splurge

Hasadna is on Hebron Road, a few minutes below the German Colony, in a converted industrial workshop with an open kitchen in the middle of it. It is the most serious cooking within walking distance of Emek Refaim.

The menu is market-led and changes constantly, with a strong hand on meat and fish, and it is not kosher — which is why it is open on Saturday when the entire German Colony is closed.

For visitors staying in Baka or the Colony, that makes it the Shabbat answer as well as the special-occasion one.

Good to know: The Shabbat answer for this neighbourhood. Saturday service starts in the early afternoon; book it.

Google Maps

11. Talbiye — Under the Jerusalem Theatre, Talbiya

At the top of the neighbourhood, open all day every day — including Shabbat.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Talbiye sits under the Jerusalem Theatre on Chopin Street, at the Talbiya end of the walk up from Emek Refaim, and it runs one long service from breakfast until the last diner, seven days a week.

It is not kosher: meat and seafood share the menu, and the wine list is one of the deeper ones in the city. The restaurant states on its own site that it opens on Shabbat.

That makes it the other Saturday option for this side of Jerusalem, and a good pre- or post-theatre dinner the rest of the week.

Good to know: Open seven days including Shabbat, and useful before a concert at the Jerusalem Theatre upstairs.

Google Maps Website

Frequently asked questions

What is the German Colony, and is it the same as Emek Refaim?

Not quite. The German Colony is the historic neighbourhood founded by the German Templers in the 1870s — stone houses with inscribed lintels, set back in gardens — and Emek Refaim is the street that runs through it and has become its high street. In practice people use the names interchangeably for the same few hundred metres of restaurants, cafes and shops between the Jerusalem Theatre and Baka.

Are the Emek Refaim restaurants kosher?

Almost all of them, and that has been true for decades — a long-standing count put all but one or two of the street's three dozen or so restaurants as kosher. They close from Friday afternoon until Saturday night. The exceptions are a short walk away rather than on the street itself: Hasadna on Hebron Road and Talbiye under the Jerusalem Theatre.

Is Emek Refaim good for families?

It is one of the best streets in Jerusalem for it. The pavements are wide, the restaurants are used to children, there are playgrounds nearby, several places do taboon bread and pizza, and the whole strip is walkable from the Anglo-heavy neighbourhoods of Baka, Katamon and Talbiya. On a Friday morning it is half of English-speaking Jerusalem having breakfast.

Where is the best brunch in the German Colony?

Grand Cafe on Derech Beit Lehem, a street over from Emek Refaim, which runs an Israeli-French-American brunch and is the neighbourhood's default. On Emek Refaim itself Caffit does the traditional big kosher dairy breakfast, which is the other thing people mean by brunch here, and it has been doing it since 1987.

Can you park on Emek Refaim?

Barely. The street is metered, narrow and permanently full, and the side streets are residents-only in most of the Colony. Most people walk from Baka, Katamon or Talbiya, or take a bus down Hebron Road. If you must drive, try the streets below Derech Beit Lehem and expect to walk ten minutes anyway.

What time do the restaurants here close on Friday?

Early, and earlier than visitors expect. Many take last Friday orders in the early afternoon and shut by about 15:00, with the whole street dark well before Shabbat comes in. Friday morning and early lunch is the best time to be here; Friday evening there is nothing open on Emek Refaim at all.

1. Caffit — 36 Emek Refaim

2. Joy — 24 Emek Refaim

3. Grand Cafe — Derech Beit Lehem

4. Pompidou — 27 Emek Refaim

5. Marvad Haksamim — 42 Emek Refaim

6. Focaccia Moshava — 35 Emek Refaim

7. Bruno — Emek Refaim

8. Roza — German Colony

9. The Coffee Mill — Emek Refaim

10. Hasadna — Hebron Road, five minutes away

11. Talbiye — Under the Jerusalem Theatre, Talbiya

Frequently asked questions

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