Skip to main content
Travel

A century after it opened, the city's traditional market is bursting with after-hours bars and restaurants. Alyssa Schwartz reports on the transformation of Jerusalem's once-staid nightlife in recent years

Because Jerusalem is a city shaped by religion and politics, Saturday night is like Sunday in most other places – Israeli weekends are observed over Friday and Saturday, which means Sunday morning is back to work.

Given the diminutiveness of the intersection of Beit Ya'akov and Ha-Shikma Streets, two of dozens of narrow streets that zigzag irregularly through Jerusalem's Nachlaot neighbourhood, adjacent to the city's 100-year-old shuk, it takes far longer than I expect to find Daniel Nahmias. On one side of the road a dozen or so people line an elevated sidewalk outside of Machneyuda – a cacophonous kitchen party of a restaurant named for the slangy pronunciation of the outdoor food market, Machane Yehuda, and touted as one of Israel's best – hopeful for walk-in seats at an eatery where reservations are snapped up weeks in advance. Across the street, people spill out of Yudale, a cozy tapas bar that's a sister spot to Machneyuda, designed to handle the overflow.

Though I don't know what Nahmias looks like – an industrial designer and co-owner of HaSchena, a drinking spot one over from Yudale whose name means "the neighbour," the Jerusalem native was recommended to me for an insider's take on the city's evolving nightlife scene – I scan the faces of the Saturday-night revellers. A moment later he sends me a WhatsApp pin with his GPS location and I walk north, past the slick-looking pizza bar and kosher, modern Kurdish joint which occupy the next street corners. I pivot one more time and spot Nahmias, a baby-faced 30-year-old who tells me he grew up just up the block from where we're standing.

People enjoying themselves with food and drink could be a Saturday night anywhere, but it feels noteworthy in Jerusalem. On the simplest level, that's because Saturday night here is like Sunday in most other places – Israeli weekends are observed over Friday and Saturday, which means Sunday morning is back to work (not that this ever stopped me from partying at the city's backpacker bars and touristy dance clubs till late on Saturday nights when I lived in Jerusalem as a university student in the late nineties). But it's also because Jerusalem is a city shaped by religion and politics; from 40 minutes before sunset on Friday, when a minute-long siren sounds across the city to announce the imminence of the Jewish Sabbath, to sundown the next day, a deep hush falls over the city. Public buses don't run and the streets are mostly free of traffic from private cars – even corner convenience stores are closed. Less than an hour before my meeting with Nahmias, this lively corner would have been a ghost town.

As the merchants of Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s traditional outdoor market, close up their shops and stalls at the end of the day, the narrow market aisles are taken over by crowds drawn by after-hours bars and restaurants that have opened in recent years.

Twenty years ago, when I lived in Jerusalem, it certainly was – by night anyway.

My roommate and I used to spend hours in the market, setting out in the morning with empty backpacks and returning to campus exhausted from haggling over cucumbers and tomatoes and fighting our way through crowds that were sometimes hundreds of people deep, our bags full of chocolatey rugelach, salty cheeses and sun-dried olives, and fresh fruit and vegetables. But once the merchants boarded up their stalls for the day the streets were quiet enough to hear your own footsteps should you happen to wander through. And while a lot can change in 20 years, Machane Yehuda's evolution into a nighttime hot spot is a far more recent development.

"Two years ago, that place didn't exist," Nahmias says, picking off bars with his pointer finger, one by one. "That one wasn't there. This one didn't exist. Now, they're popping up like mushrooms after the rain."

During my recent visit to Jerusalem, I heard several versions of what happened next, but they all went something like this: Young locals like Nahmias got tired of having to drive to Tel Aviv for good food and nightlife and decided it was time to foster a scene that was uniquely Jerusalem.

A few blocks away, in the market proper, Solomon Souza, a British-born street artist in his early 20s who moved to Jerusalem as a teen to study at yeshiva (a men's seminary), approached stall owners offering to paint the plain metal grates which they roll down to protect their wares overnight. The result is more than 150 colourful murals that depict Jerusalemite and Israeli figures from biblical to modern times and which can only be seen after dark. On the northern end of the market – which borders Jerusalem's more ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods – the mural subjects are predominantly male and traditional figures, Nahmias pointed out as we strolled through; moving south in the direction of the city's more modern and secular populations, they depict people like Golda Meir, Israel's fourth prime minister and the third woman in the world to hold this title, and Lucy Aharish, the first Arab news host on Israeli television.

In Jerusalem’s thriving bars and restaurants, traditional foods, styles and customs intermingle comfortably and easily with new and cosmopolitan trends.

Narrow market aisles are now chockablock with after-hours bars and restaurants – at one, patrons sit atop fruit and vegetable stands that have been draped with blankets (used by mutual agreement between bar and stall operators, it's not uncommon for the stands to still be in use when the shopkeepers come to reclaim them at dawn). At another bar tucked into a hidden courtyard known as the Georgian shuk, the sweet yeast of tomorrow's bread wafts from an adjacent bakery; called Casino de Paris, the spot shares a name with the officer's club and bordello which occupied the same space during the 1930s British Mandate era.

Jerusalem, it becomes clear, is undergoing a renaissance. In part, this seems designed to counter the effect of the city's most religious populations. Hundreds of roads in the city are closed on Shabbat, either legally or illegally barricaded, and unlike Tel Aviv, where treif (unkosher food) is the norm in restaurants and Saturday brunch is a city-wide pastime, dietary laws have long played a role in Jerusalem's culinary scene.

While the city's traditional rhythms do still prevail – Machneyuda, for example, closes over the Sabbath, though that's presumably so the restaurant's high-energy chefs and kitchen staff, known to break out into a Guns N'Roses air band using pots, pans, blowtorches and other utensils, can get a break – there's a sense of picking and choosing in a way that isn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

"This isn't Tel Aviv," Nahmias says more than once in various contexts during our night out. When I stroll into Satya, located on the ground floor of an apartment building on a leafy street in what was the first Jewish neighbourhood outside the Old City, for a snack on Saturday afternoon, there's a sleepy vibe that reminds me of Shabbat afternoons spent lazing under huge cypress and pine trees in nearby Independence Park with my friends; as I sit at the bar and sip a herby gin smash and dig into beet carpaccio that's been charred and decorated with bits of candied pecans, the dad next to me helps his son pop the heads off of a mound of gleaming prawns, a dish that definitely doesn't pass the kosher test.

Narrow market aisles are now chockablock with after-hours bars and restaurants – at one, patrons sit atop fruit and vegetable stands that have been draped with blankets

Hip new accommodations are opening, too, to straddle this new middle ground. The clientele at Villa Brown, a boutique hotel that opened this year in a restored 19th-century mansion, is largely weekending Israelis and decidedly not religious; though the property is kosher, it differs from the city's larger hotels in that management opted for an alternative certification which, while still conforming to dietary laws, does so in a way that is more collaborative with its signatories and less heavy-handed. This means, for example, that some vegetables that are verboten by more stringent criteria can be served, but coffee service on Saturdays – when the Sabbath prohibits brewing – is, to my dismay, still Nescafé.

"When you wake up in the morning, you need to ask yourself questions," Nahmias says as we walk into his bar at the end of the evening. "Why I am still here? What do I want this to be? Less difficult cities don't demand this." He pours me a shot of house-made limoncello and smiles. "But that's why we drink."

The writer travelled as a guest of Villa Brown and Air Canada. They did not review or approve this article.


Air Canada recently introduced seasonal direct service from Montreal to Israel, and offers daily flights year-round from Toronto. From Ben Gurion Airport, it's about an hour's drive to Jerusalem; a private taxi costs approximately 250 Israeli shekels (about $90), and shared taxis and buses are also available.

Where to stay

Situated in a 19th-century mansion, the 24-room Villa Brown stylishly melds old and new; breakfast, which includes a curated assortment of Middle Eastern mezes, is a highlight. From $260 (U.S.), including breakfast. brownhotels.com/villa.

Where to eat

Machneyuda: The riffy menu plays on traditional Jewish and Middle Eastern flavours and changes daily. Music is near-deafening – don't fight it; between courses get up on your table and dance along with everyone else. Reservations are recommended and accepted by phone only; machneyuda.co.il.

Jacko's Street: Not all of Jerusalem's destination restaurants shun Jewish dietary laws – Jacko's, which opened in the shuk four years ago, recently moved to a bigger space to accommodate waiting lists that sometimes stretched to 100 people in a night. Asado bruschetta with porcini mushrooms and basil aioli and the Original Camel cocktail – which tastes like a pina colada but has raw tahini among the ingredients – are among the must-orders; rol.co.il/sites/jackos-street.

Satya: A relaxed and elegant option for Shabbat – or anytime – Satya offers Mediterranean-driven flavours and lots of hard-to-find seafood options. That said, vegetable offerings – such as an heirloom tomato salad with labane and buffalo mozzarella and charred beets with crème fraîche and candied pecans – are the stars; satya.co.il.