City Guide - Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

World's 50 Best Bars editor Hamish Smith imbibes at Israel’s finest

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ISRAELIS SAY: "IN HAIFA PEOPLE WORK, IN JERUSALEM THEY PRAY AND IN TEL AVIV THEY PARTY". TEL AVIV IS PROBABLY A GOOD PLACE TO DO A BAR GUIDE THEN. The coastal city has long had a reputation for hedonism but just recently it has started to mature. Popping up all over the city are cocktail bars – the good sort - that cater for the young and adventurous, expats and tourists. It’s early days but here are five from Tel Aviv, starting with the forefather Bar 223. Then we take an hour’s drive out to Jerusalem to see whether there’s some drinking, in among all that praying.

Bar 223

223 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv

Cocktails in Tel Aviv make no sense without Bar 223. In the six years that it’s been open, it has schooled many of the city’s best bartenders. In fact, one of the joint founders Ariel Leizgold  (the other being Aviran Avidan) has since opened Bellboy and has a share in Spicehaus. Imperial Craft co-owner Bar Shira used to manage the place. 

Style-wise, think Employees Only without the chicken soup. It has an American feel, with a long bar and stools facing smiling bartenders, not least head bartender Omer Gazit-Shalev. Patrons are arranged over two floors, connected by a chandelier that drills through the floor, hanging from top to bottom. 

Swing is on the record player and classics are on the menu – this was the first bar to eschew the spirit and mixers and do things properly in Tel Aviv. Pioneer bars are often eventually surpassed but without the steps they took way back when and the foundations they laid, Tel Aviv’s flowering of cocktail interest in the past 18 months may not have happened at all. 

Imperial Craft

66 HaYarkon Street, Tel Aviv

Standing on a nondescript street corner under the red neon glow of the generically named Imperial Hotel, you could be just about anywhere in the world. Of course you are in Tel Aviv, and the angular post-war block before you, is actually the new headquarters of the Middle East’s cocktail capital.  

You wouldn’t know it, passing through the motel-esque foyer, complete with overweight, yawning male receptionist.  But tucked into one side of the expanse is a room within a room, completely at odds with its surroundings. This is Imperial Craft.

The first few seconds are the most important of any bar visit. At Imperial Craft, it comes in the form of an opened door and a wide smile. Safely ensconced, the hostess leads you to your seats, either the high tables that wrap around the floor or the stools that dot the L-shaped bar. Wherever you are, it’s an intimate affair. 

Owners Bar Shira, Dror Alterovich and Gilad Livnat need never work again – as bartenders anyway. Their bartenders work the room as if they’ve been at it for years – at least for longer than the two years it has been open. Imperial Craft is probably proving the best drinking experience available in Israel today. 

When the doors first opened, there was more reverence to the classics but as the customer base has developed (they’re busy every night from 6pm until late) so have tastes. The offering now is taking Tel Aviv into unchartered cocktail waters. And word of this colonially-steeped outpost of discerning drinking is spreading. Globally.

Bellboy

Berdyczewski Street 14, Tel Aviv

This central-yet-residential Tel Aviv speakeasy (above left) has something of the Nightjar about it. No surprises there – one of the city’s cocktail pioneers, Ariel Leizgold, enlisted Marian Bek to consult on its opening a little over a year ago.

 The themes of American jazz, Prohibition and the roaring ’20s are all evident in one shape or form – lots of wood, curtains where there might be walls and a square bar cut into one side. 

Sit here and watch the classical action nose to nose, or plant your cheeks on the shabby but comfortable lounge chairs that populate the floor. From here you can survey the scene – scores of young trendy Israelis and nocturnal tourists sampling one of the city’s new forays into cocktail culture. 

You’ll also be in prime position to call over the pram. This mini Silver Cross-type wagon makes its way from table to table, attracting the ums, ahhs and even horror of the crowd. Inside there is no baby but a menacing arsenal of shots – classy ones mind, not mixtos and Jägers. 

This bar delivers signatures and twists on classics to an international standard. The garnishes are scaled back Bek, but still bear his artistic stamp. 

Hide and Seek

Brenner Street 2, Tel Aviv

It says something about the appetite for cocktail bars in Tel Aviv that this place had queues out the door before it had a fully stocked bar or menus. No beer, no wine – no matter. Customers were perfectly happy slaking their thirst with good old classics – and this is a country which a year or two ago had practically zero cocktail culture.

Now, six months of business in, 70% of the take is made from cocktails in this bar that stretches from in to outdoors. In a city where winter evenings can be 20°C alfresco drinking is something that many cocktail bars can’t offer. Owned and run by Oron Lerner, one of the bar’s staff is the Israeli Beefeater champion and some cocktails draw on international flavours. Try the Jameson Black Barrel, apple jack, lemon and egg white drink. 

Spicehaus

Dizengoff 117, Tel Aviv 

Half a century ago, this was a coffee shop and bohemian refuge for the free thinkers of early Israeli society. Situated on the main drag of Tel Aviv, the latter end of the century saw the poets and philosophers make way and eventually the place fell off the intellectual map. Peering through the black framed windows today is an altogether different proposition. Six months ago Spicehaus was born.

Here there’s a mix of styles. Once you pass the skeleton that guards the door, the theme is a mix of spice shop and apothecary, with all manner of bottles set against what – to the British eye – is a Victorian backdrop of black and white tiles and a panelled ceiling. Shared cocktails are a thing here but solo imbibing is just as theatrical. Drinks are served in pharmaceutical bottles housed in over-sized teacups before the contents are decanted into vintage glasses.

Even though the themes are present in other bars around the world, this place stands apart from its neighbours. Among the many, high-volume venues of the strip, it is refreshing to see such a bar, even if it is not yet every Israeli’s cup of tea.  

Jerusalem bars

Gatsby

18 Hillel Street, Jerusalem

The best cocktail bar in Jerusalem is Gatsby – opened six months ago, it was also the first. What book opens the secret door to this place is probably best left unknown (there are a few favourites in the area that might compete for that honour) but either way this is a quintessential entrance to a quintessential speakeasy bar.

They haven’t missed a detail. Bartenders in bowties perform to a crowd of locals perched on stools surrounding high tables that stretch across the sizeable black and white marble floor. Swing, jazz and double-shaking offer a thrumming rhythm to proceedings. The menu is mainly classical in approach but the way it is displayed is not. Each drink has a postcard in its honour, which is novel, if a little time- consuming to read. Still, the drinks are worth the wait.

Zuta

10 King David Street, Jerusalem 

Hidden at the back of one of the best restaurants in town, 1868, is Zuta, a hideout that has been open just a few months. Lighter and more airy than a speakeasy, this place is the work of owner yankale Turjeman, a 31-year-old chef and cocktail enthusiast.

On the bar-side of the limestone walls you will find straight-up classics of the kind that should be mastered by all bartenders before they experiment. Turjeman did his homework, visiting 25 bars on his last visit to London. He returned with an extra suitcase of equipment and otherwise inaccessible booze.

What he has created is a nice, simple bar that does things in the right way. There are many more ambitious hotel bars in Jerusalem that aren’t a patch on Zuta – as Turjeman said on hearing W50BB was doing a bar tour of the city: “That won’t take long.”