Drinking habits are vastly different on the two sides of town. West Jerusalem, as in so many other things, is much like Europe, with espresso coffee, café culture and tables on the pavement. Bars get going late and people tend to hang out in them until the early hours. In Arab East Jerusalem, on the other hand, including the Old City, a café still usually means the traditional qahwa, where Turkish coffee or tea with mint is served to men smoking argilas (hookah pipes) and playing backgammon. Bars on the east side are few and far between. Of late, a few more Western-style cafés have opened up in East Jerusalem serving espresso and food, and it remains to be seen whether the trend set in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, where women have taken to frequenting qahwas and even smoking argilas, will spread to Jerusalem. Bint al-Balad is a café set up especially for women, though men can drink there too.
Tea can be a bit hit-and-miss in terms of quality. It's usually served black, often with a sprig of mint (in which case it is known in Arabic as shai bi-nana and in Hebrew as tay binana) or a slice of lemon, but all too often it consists of a meagre tea bag dunked in a cup of vaguely hot water, or even a cup of lukewarm water with a teabag on the saucer for you to do the honours yourself (a favourite in Israeli restaurants). Arab qahwas are more likely - but by no means certain - to make it properly with loose-leaf tea and boiling water.
Awful though their tea may be, however, Israeli cafés do generally serve very good espresso coffee . A cappuccino is usually topped with a large amount of whipped cream and chocolate; caffé latte has lots of milk but usually escapes the toppings, while afukh means espresso with just a little milk (like an Italian macchiato or Spanish cortado). Instant coffee (known universally as Nescafé, or just Nes) is also normally available in Israeli cafés and comes white unless you specify no milk (bliy halav). Arab establishments generally serve Turkish coffee, usually with cardamom (bi-hel). If you don't like cardamom, ask for it without (bidoun hel).
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Israelis are not big drinkers, so even in many West Jerusalem bars, coffee and soft drinks are served. Cafés, on the other hand, especially in West Jerusalem, often keep a small stock of liquor (handy if you fancy a slug of brandy in your coffee), so the distinction between a café and a bar is sometimes blurred.
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Alcohol is easily available in West Jerusalem and in some of the more expensive restaurants in the East. Taybeh, produced by Palestine's first microbrewery, near Ramallah, and brewed according to the German beer law, with only four ingredients - barley, hops, yeast and water - is by far the best beer in the country, but not easy to find. West Jerusalem now has its own new and very micro brewery indeed, Eli's, producing a rather sweet Caribbean-style stout, which is currently available only at one bar, Mike's. Israeli Maccabi and Goldstar, and foreign brands such as Carlsberg, Tuborg and Amstel, brewed in Israel under licence are not great and tend to be made with maize as well as barley. Olives, pickles, pretzels or sunflower seeds are often served with beer in bars. Israeli-made spirits are invariably awful, and best avoided. The quality can be disguised with fruit juice or mixers, but over-indulgence will result in a severe hangover. Unfortunately, imported spirits are fiendishly expensive and in general are exempt from happy-hour reductions.