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Jerusalem Food & Drink Open on Shabbat

The 11 Best Restaurants Open on Shabbat in Jerusalem (2026)

Updated October 2026 · 11 picks

Jerusalem's best restaurants open on Shabbat are Talbiye, Hasadna, Mona, Satya and Chakra in the centre, Karma and Brasserie in Ein Kerem, and the American Colony courtyard. All are non-kosher or East Jerusalem kitchens, because a kosher certificate means closing from Friday afternoon until Saturday night. Eleven, below.

1. Talbiye — Talbiya, under the Jerusalem Theatre

The most reliable good meal in Jerusalem on a Saturday — open morning to night, every day of the week.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Talbiye sits underneath the Jerusalem Theatre on Chopin Street, and it has quietly become the default answer to the Shabbat question. It runs a single long service from breakfast through to the last diner, which means it covers Friday night, Saturday lunch and Saturday afternoon without a gap.

The kitchen is not kosher and does not pretend otherwise: the menu runs to meat and seafood together, and the wine list is one of the deeper ones in the city. Mornings are a proper breakfast operation, lunch is lighter, and dinner is the serious part of the day.

It is also a comfortable room for a long meal, and it draws a local Talbiya and Rehavia crowd rather than a purely tourist one — which is part of why it is hard to walk into on a Saturday.

Good to know: Saturday is the week's busiest sitting here, so book. The restaurant confirms on its own site that it opens on Shabbat.

Google Maps Website

2. Hasadna (The Culinary Workshop) — Hebron Road, Talpiot

Jerusalem's best serious Saturday lunch — a converted workshop with an open kitchen on Hebron Road.

₪₪₪₪ Splurge

Hasadna, meaning the workshop, occupies a converted industrial space on Hebron Road and is one of the few Jerusalem restaurants where you can have a genuinely ambitious lunch on a Saturday. The dining room keeps the bones of the building, with high ceilings and exposed structure, and puts an open kitchen in the middle of it.

The cooking is market-led and changes often, with a strong hand on meat and fish. It is not kosher, which is exactly why the doors are open when most of the city's are shut.

Saturday service starts in the early afternoon and runs on from there, so it suits a slow lunch that drifts into the evening rather than a quick stop between sights.

Good to know: Saturday service starts around 12:30 and the first two hours are the busiest — book, and ask what came in that morning.

Google Maps

3. Mona — Artists House, Shmuel HaNagid 12

Modern Mediterranean cooking in the stone building that housed the original Bezalel Academy.

₪₪₪₪ Splurge

Mona is in the Artists House on Shmuel HaNagid, a late-19th-century stone building that was the first home of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. It is one of the most atmospheric rooms in Jerusalem, with vaulted stone, high windows and a courtyard that comes into its own in warm weather.

The kitchen, under chef Moshiko Gamlieli, cooks modern Mediterranean food with a particularly good hand on fish and seafood. The restaurant came out of the Machneyuda group and went independent in 2018, and it has kept the cooking confidence while dropping most of the noise.

The courtyard wine bar, Nagid 12, opened in 2024 and gives you a lighter and cheaper way into the same building — useful if you want a glass and a few plates rather than a full dinner.

Good to know: Hours vary by season and Mona does not open every day — confirm by phone before you plan a Saturday around it.

Google Maps

4. Satya — Keren HaYesod 36, Talbiya

A short, well-run Shabbat lunch sitting in a neighbourhood where almost nothing else opens.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Satya is on Keren HaYesod, in the stretch of Talbiya between the King David hotel and the Jerusalem Theatre, and it keeps an unusual timetable: dinner from early evening on weekdays, and a single defined lunch sitting on Shabbat itself.

That makes it one of the most useful addresses in the city if you are staying in the hotel district and want lunch on Saturday within walking distance, rather than a taxi ride out to Ein Kerem.

Because the Saturday sitting is a fixed window rather than an all-day service, it books out — and because the window is short, arriving late costs you most of the meal.

Good to know: The Shabbat sitting runs roughly 12:30–15:30, so book and arrive at the start of it rather than the end.

Google Maps Website

5. Chakra — Central Jerusalem, by Independence Park

Open since 2000 and still the most dependable non-kosher dinner in the city centre.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Chakra has been feeding central Jerusalem since 2000, which in this city makes it an institution. It sits near Independence Park, a few minutes from King George and the main hotels, and it has been on the short list of Shabbat-open restaurants for the whole of that time.

The menu is broad Mediterranean — grilled meat and fish, mezze, pasta — done consistently rather than fashionably, and the bar is a real bar rather than an afterthought. It is the kind of place you can take a mixed group to without checking anyone's preferences first.

The room is large by Jerusalem standards, which helps on a Friday night when the city's other options are already turning people away.

Good to know: One of the better bets for a late Friday dinner, when most Jerusalem kitchens have shut for the day.

Google Maps

6. The Courtyard, American Colony Hotel — Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem

An Ottoman stone courtyard that keeps hotel hours straight through Shabbat.

₪₪₪₪ Splurge

The American Colony was built as a pasha's house in the 1860s and has been a hotel since the end of the 19th century. Its Courtyard restaurant sits in the original stone quadrangle, under citrus trees, and it is the most civilised place in Jerusalem to eat on a Saturday afternoon.

Because it is an East Jerusalem hotel operation, the kitchen works normal hours all weekend — breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner — with a Levantine-leaning menu alongside the international hotel standards.

It is also a famously neutral meeting ground: journalists, diplomats and both halves of the city have used the bar and the courtyard for decades, and the staff are entirely unbothered by whoever walks in.

Good to know: Saturday lunch in the courtyard is the move. The Cellar Bar downstairs is open too, and is one of the city's better rooms for a drink.

Google Maps Website

7. Karma — Ein Kerem

Ein Kerem's seven-day kitchen, and the reason the village fills up on Saturday.

₪₪ Mid-range

Ein Kerem, the old village on Jerusalem's western edge, is the city's Shabbat escape valve: a handful of restaurants along one street that stay open while the rest of town closes, in a valley of stone houses and churches that is worth the trip on its own.

Karma, on the main street, is the one that opens seven days a week. It is a relaxed, non-kosher neighbourhood kitchen — burgers, salads, pasta, breakfast until late — with a terrace looking down the valley and a crowd that is half Jerusalemites and half visitors who have walked up from the spring.

It works equally well for a long Saturday breakfast and for Friday night, and it is one of the few places in the city where turning up with children on Shabbat is uncomplicated.

Good to know: Friday afternoon to Saturday evening is taken by phone rather than online, and the terrace tables go first.

Google Maps

8. Brasserie Ein Kerem — HaMa'ayan Street, Ein Kerem

A proper brasserie menu with a view over the Ein Kerem valley, open through the weekend.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Brasserie Ein Kerem is on HaMa'ayan Street, the lane that runs down towards the spring, and it does what the name says: a French-leaning brasserie menu, open long hours, in a village that empties of options the moment Shabbat starts.

It opens from late in the week through Saturday, from mid-morning until late, which makes it the Ein Kerem choice if you want a sit-down dinner on Friday or Saturday night rather than a daytime meal.

The view is the other half of the appeal — the terrace looks across the valley to the Church of the Visitation, and the walk down to the spring afterwards is one of the better things to do in Jerusalem on a Saturday.

Good to know: Open Thursday to Saturday from around 9:00 until midnight — the widest Shabbat window of anywhere in Ein Kerem.

Google Maps

9. Menza — City centre, near Bezalel

An unfussy non-kosher bistro in the centre, open when the rest of the street is dark.

₪₪ Mid-range

Menza is a small, long-running bistro in the city centre near Bezalel, and it has been on every Jerusalem Shabbat list for years for the simple reason that it opens. The food is comfort cooking — schnitzel, pasta, big salads, a decent burger — at prices well below the Talbiya restaurants.

It suits the Saturday problem that the fine-dining options do not: you want lunch rather than an event, and you do not want to book three days ahead or take a taxi across town.

The room is small and the pavement tables are the good ones, so the practical advice is to go early in the sitting rather than at the peak of it.

Good to know: Smaller and cheaper than the Talbiya restaurants, and far easier to get into at short notice on a Saturday.

Google Maps

10. Focaccia Bar — Rabbi Akiva Street, city centre

The big covered courtyard that has absorbed Jerusalem's Shabbat overflow for two decades.

₪₪ Mid-range

Focaccia Bar, on Rabbi Akiva just off the centre, is built around a large covered courtyard — which is the whole point. It can seat a crowd, it does not require a reservation weeks out, and it has been the city's Shabbat overflow room for the better part of twenty years.

The menu is wide and familiar: focaccia and dips to start, then grills, pasta, fish and salads. Nobody claims it is the most interesting cooking in Jerusalem, and that is not what it is for.

What it is for is a group of eight on a Saturday afternoon with no plan, which in this city is a genuinely valuable thing to have.

Good to know: The best option here for a large group or for children — the courtyard is covered, and heated in winter.

Google Maps

11. Austrian Hospice — Via Dolorosa, Old City

Viennese coffee and apple strudel on an Old City rooftop, open on Saturday like the rest of the quarter.

₪₪ Mid-range

The Austrian Hospice is the oldest Christian guesthouse in Jerusalem, founded in the 1850s at the corner of Via Dolorosa and El-Wad in the Muslim Quarter. Its cafe is an entirely unexpected piece of Vienna in the middle of the Old City: Melange coffee, apple strudel and Sachertorte, served in a garden and on a roof terrace with one of the best free views in the city.

Because it sits outside the Jewish Quarter, Shabbat makes no difference to its hours — it is open on Saturday exactly as it is on a Tuesday, which is the single most useful fact about eating in the Old City at the weekend.

It is a cafe rather than a restaurant, so treat it as the Saturday coffee-and-cake stop between the Kotel and the Damascus Gate rather than as lunch.

Good to know: Climb to the roof terrace — it is open to cafe customers and looks over the Old City rooftops to the Mount of Olives.

Google Maps Website

Frequently asked questions

Why are so few Jerusalem restaurants open on Shabbat?

Because kosher certification requires closing. A restaurant under rabbinate supervision cannot trade from roughly an hour before sunset on Friday until after dark on Saturday, and the overwhelming majority of West Jerusalem kitchens are certified. So the Saturday map is almost entirely made up of the city's non-kosher restaurants, plus East Jerusalem and the non-Jewish quarters of the Old City, where the question never arises.

What time do Jerusalem restaurants close on Friday?

Kosher places stop serving early — many take their last Friday orders between 14:00 and 15:00, and some close at lunchtime altogether. If you want a Friday dinner you are choosing from the non-kosher list, and you should book, because the city's small number of Friday-night tables fill days ahead.

Is anything open in the Old City on Saturday?

Yes. The Jewish Quarter's kosher kitchens shut on Friday afternoon, but the Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters keep ordinary hours, so the hummus counters on and around Via Dolorosa, the Christian guesthouse cafes and the Austrian Hospice are all open. It is the simplest answer to lunch on Saturday if you are already inside the walls.

Can you get a taxi or bus to a restaurant on Shabbat in Jerusalem?

Buses and the light rail do not run. Taxis do, including through the apps, and that is how most people get around on Saturday — expect to pay more than on a weekday, and expect a wait as Shabbat ends. Walking distance from where you are staying is worth factoring into which of these you pick.

Do these restaurants need reservations on Shabbat?

Treat it as yes. Because the supply of open tables is so much smaller than on a weekday, Friday night and Saturday lunch are the hardest sittings in Jerusalem to walk into. Several places here take Friday and Saturday bookings only by phone, and some close their online system for the weekend, so call.

Are any kosher restaurants in Jerusalem open on Saturday night?

Many reopen once Shabbat is out, which in winter can be from around 18:00 and in summer not until after 20:30. Saturday night is one of the busiest restaurant nights of the Jerusalem week, so the kosher places that reopen tend to be fully booked — reserve in advance rather than turning up.

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