You could spend weeks in Jerusalem eating well and healthily without ever going into a restaurant. Breads, cheeses and yogurts, pickles, olives, fresh vegetables and fruit are freely available and cheap. Café and street stall foods such as hummus, falafel, corn on the cob, pulses and sweets are available everywhere. Also common are shops selling what are known in Arabic as bizr, in Hebrew as bitzuhim - nuts, seeds, salted roast chickpeas and the like - while bakeries in West Jerusalem supply burekas, Israel's second-most popular finger food (after falafel), consisting of a puff-pastry triangle stuffed with cheese, spinach or potato.
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Many of the cafés listed under "Drinking" also serve food, especially snacks.
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But the restaurants are good too. In East Jerusalem, they serve excellent-value traditional Middle Eastern foods , especially mezze (mixed hors d'oeuvres) and kebabs. In the western half of town, on the other hand, there is an extraordinary variety of international cuisine , including Thai and Chinese, French and Italian, Indian, Kurdish and Yemeni, even South African and South American. Thai fast-food stands are especially common, though the greasy stirfries that most of them churn out are a far cry from the aromatic delights of Thailand, or even of Thai restaurants in Britain or America.
Strangely, what Westerners usually think of as Jewish cooking - gefilte fish, latkes and the like - is surprisingly hard to come by. And though bagels are famously Jewish, you won't find a decent one in Jerusalem, or indeed in Israel. That's because the bagels here are steamed rather than boiled before baking, so they don't get that chewy texture vital for a real Yiddische bagel. The best approximation you'll get is at Bonkers Bagels, on Zion Square, and at 10 King George St, where various types are sold plain or filled, but don't be surprised if they fail to equal the ones you know and love from London, Detroit or New York. The sesame-covered bagel-shaped bread rolls sold in East Jerusalem are called ka'ak, and usually eaten with za'atar, of which you should be given a small amount in a twist of paper when you buy one.
The most famous local bread is pitta, a round, flat, hollow bread, into which falafel or shawarma are stuffed, along with the requisite salad or pickles, for street eating. On a Friday in West Jerusalem, you'll also come across halla, a yeasty plaited loaf made with egg, used to celebrate Shabbat and Jewish festivals.
Junk food junkies in need of a fix will find McDonald's at 4 Shamai, and Burger King at 7 Ben Yehuda, both in downtown West Jerusalem.