The 7 Best Bakeries in Tel Aviv (2026)

Updated August 2026 · 7 picks

The best bakeries in Tel Aviv are Lehamim for babka and challah, the Balkan bureka bakeries on Levinsky, the Yemenite kubaneh and jachnun places in Kerem HaTeimanim, and Abulafia in Jaffa, which never closes. Friday morning is the biggest bake of the week. Seven worth the queue, below.

1. Lehamim Bakery — Central Tel Aviv

Uri Scheft's bakery — the babka that went global started here.

₪₪ Mid-range

Lehamim is the most influential bakery in Israel of the last twenty years: Uri Scheft's Tel Aviv operation, the parent of Breads Bakery in New York, and the place most responsible for the chocolate babka's international career.

The range applies serious European technique to Israeli ingredients — sourdough and laminated pastry alongside challah, burekas, rugelach and halva-laced things — with a consistency the neighbourhood bakeries do not aim for.

It is also a cafe, so you can sit, and the Friday morning challah rush is a genuine event.

Good to know: Go before 10am on a Friday. By noon the shelves are visibly thinner.

Google Maps Website

2. The Levinsky bureka bakeries — Levinsky, south Tel Aviv

Hand-laminated Balkan pastry, sold by the piece, eaten on the pavement.

₪ Budget

Levinsky market was built by Balkan, Greek and Turkish Jewish immigrants in the 1920s and 30s, and the bureka bakeries along it still make the real thing: properly laminated pastry filled with salty cheese, potato, spinach or mushroom.

The correct order is 'with everything' — split open, a hard-boiled egg crushed over it, chopped tomato salad, a pickle — which turns a pastry into the standard Israeli working breakfast.

The street is also Israel's spice market, so the walk between bakeries takes you past tahini, za'atar, halva and dried fruit worth buying.

Good to know: Cheese burekas are the benchmark. If those are good, everything else there will be.

Google Maps Website

3. Abulafia — Jaffa

Baking in Jaffa since 1879, open around the clock, open on Shabbat.

₪ Budget

Abulafia has been at the edge of Old Jaffa since the nineteenth century and operates around the clock, which has made it the default answer for anyone who wants bread at 4am, on a Saturday, or during Pesach.

The signature is the range of open flatbreads sold hot from the window — za'atar, cheese, egg, and combinations that have drifted well past tradition — alongside the sweet pastries.

During Pesach it becomes something of a pilgrimage for people who want leavened bread, which is one of the more quietly telling scenes in Israeli food culture.

Good to know: The za'atar flatbread straight from the oven is the order. Eat it walking towards the port.

Google Maps Website

4. The Yemenite Quarter bakeries — Kerem HaTeimanim

Kubaneh, jachnun and malawach — a completely different baking tradition.

₪ Budget

The Yemenite Quarter, between the Carmel Market and the sea, is where to find the Yemenite baking canon: kubaneh, the slow-baked pull-apart bread; jachnun, the tightly rolled overnight pastry; and malawach, fried and flaky.

Kubaneh and jachnun are Shabbat foods, cooked overnight at very low heat, and they are served with grated fresh tomato, a hard-boiled egg browned by the same long cooking, and skhug.

Several places now sell them through the week. The quarter itself is a pocket of low old houses in the middle of the city and worth the walk.

Good to know: Skhug is much hotter than it looks. Ask for it on the side the first time.

Google Maps Website

5. The Neve Tzedek patisseries — Neve Tzedek

The polished end — proper pastry, in the prettiest streets in the city.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Neve Tzedek's small bakeries and patisseries do the refined version: laminated pastry, tarts, cakes with proper technique, frequently reworked with tahini, halva, date or citrus.

Prices are higher here than anywhere else on this list and you are partly paying for the street, which is the most attractive in Tel Aviv — low nineteenth-century houses, narrow lanes, pavement tables.

It is the right choice for sitting down for an hour rather than eating something out of a paper bag.

Good to know: Order the tahini or halva version of whatever they make — it beats the plain one.

Google Maps Website

6. The Carmel Market bakeries — Shuk HaCarmel

In the middle of the market, at market prices, with everything else around it.

₪ Budget

The Carmel Market and the streets running off it hold bakery counters selling bread, burekas, rugelach and pastries at market prices, in the middle of the busiest few hundred metres in Tel Aviv.

It is not the most refined baking in the city but it is the most convenient, and buying a bag of rugelach while doing everything else in the market is the natural way to use it.

Friday morning is the peak — the whole city shops here at once, and it is very hard to move and very good to be in.

Good to know: Combine with the halva stalls — the sellers hand out samples and expect you to taste.

Google Maps Website

7. The Florentin bakeries — Florentin

Small independent bakeries and vegan baking, in the city's creative quarter.

₪₪ Mid-range

Florentin's bakeries run smaller and scrappier than the rest of this list: independent operations, several of them vegan, doing sourdough, cinnamon buns, cakes and coffee out of small shopfronts.

The neighbourhood's character — young, cheap, covered in street art — produced a baking scene that is more experimental and less bound to the traditional canon.

It is also the best place in Tel Aviv to find a genuinely good vegan pastry, which in most cities is a much harder ask.

Good to know: The vegan bakeries here are worth seeking out even if you are not vegan.

Google Maps Website

Frequently asked questions

When should I go to a bakery in Tel Aviv?

Early, and ideally Friday morning. Bakeries here bake for the day rather than holding stock, and the best things sell out by mid-morning. Friday is the largest bake of the week because of challah for Shabbat, and most kosher bakeries then close by early afternoon until Saturday night.

What should I buy?

Chocolate or halva babka, a challah on a Friday, and a bureka with a crushed egg and a pickle. Add rugelach while they are still warm, and kubaneh or jachnun if you find a Yemenite bakery. The Israeli items beat the imported French pastry at nearly every bakery in the city.

What does bakery food cost?

Roughly ₪12–₪20 for a bureka or a pastry, ₪18–₪30 for a good challah, and ₪25–₪45 for a babka loaf. It is one of the cheapest ways to eat well in Tel Aviv, and a bureka with an egg is a full breakfast for under ₪20.

Which bakeries open on Shabbat?

Non-kosher bakeries in central Tel Aviv, and everything in Jaffa. Abulafia in Jaffa famously operates around the clock, including Saturday and through Pesach. Kosher-certified bakeries close from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening, so buy on Friday morning.

What happens at Pesach?

Kosher bakeries close for the whole week or switch to matzah-based baking, since leavened bread cannot be sold. Every year this surprises visitors. Arab-owned bakeries in Jaffa and non-kosher places carry on as normal, so bread is findable — just not in the usual places.

Is there good gluten-free and vegan baking?

Yes to both, and more than in most cities. Tel Aviv's vegan population is large enough that vegan bakeries exist and vegan options are standard elsewhere; several bakeries also carry gluten-free lines. Tahini and halva help — a lot of Israeli baking is dairy-free already.

1. Lehamim Bakery — Central Tel Aviv

2. The Levinsky bureka bakeries — Levinsky, south Tel Aviv

3. Abulafia — Jaffa

4. The Yemenite Quarter bakeries — Kerem HaTeimanim

5. The Neve Tzedek patisseries — Neve Tzedek

6. The Carmel Market bakeries — Shuk HaCarmel

7. The Florentin bakeries — Florentin

Frequently asked questions

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