Chalav U’Dvash: The Jerusalem Cafe You Have To Try

There’s a particular feeling you get at a table when someone has cooked for you out of love. You can’t quite name it, but you know it the moment it hits your tongue. At Chalav U’Dvash in Jerusalem, that feeling is prominent in every bite and sip. Hadassah, the owner, built the whole cafe around it.

We started off with their signature fried lox sandwich, a unique twist on a classic sandwich meshing familiar with the unique. Their sourdough pizzas aren’t your standard fare either, ours was topped with garlic confit and caramelized onions with a crispy undercarriage and crust.

For sides, their bitesized cauliflower poppers, little florets coated in beer batter and deep fried, are the ultimate side dish, alongside the crispy breaded mozzarella sticks, a rare find in Israel. I’m not sure the last time I enjoyed a mozzarella stick this good.

What stands out is that nothing on the menu shares a shortcut. Every dish is built from its own base, no single all-purpose sauce or dressing stretched across ten items to save time. The salad dressings are all made in-house, each dish given its own love and care to get it right. “I want people to eat here and feel that a woman made this,” says Hadassah. “Where you feel the love and heart that goes into each dish.”

Walk in and the menu doesn’t try to be a typical Israeli cafe. Delicious carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, NY style cheesecakes and avocado toasts are a far cry from the shakshuka and Israeli salad typical of most local cafes, but Hadassah serves what she likes to eat, and hopes that the locals will too.

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“I didn’t want to be another bagel shop,” she says. Jerusalem has bagel shops. It didn’t have this.

Before there was a cafe, there was a decade of home catering done at home, in a kitchen that never shut down. For ten years Hadassah built her reputation the old-fashioned way: one simcha at a time, mostly meat, mostly for other people’s tables. Dairy was new territory for her; opening a cafe meant relearning her own instincts in a different register, moist lemon poppyseed muffins instead of roasts, chickpea and cauliflower salads instead of cholent.

Then came a COVID scare that changed everything. She pulled through, and with a new resolve: if Hadassah was going to keep cooking, it would be in her very own cafe. She’ll be the first to tell you that a decade of home catering did not prepare her for opening a restaurant. Knowing how to craft the perfect cholent and kugel and knowing how to run a restaurant that cooks hundreds of different meals a day are two entirely different skill sets. She had to learn the second skill from scratch, in real time, while people were already lining up.

And they did line up. From the day Chalav U’Dvash opened, the line went out the door, and for the entire first year, it barely let up. As the new Kosher Mehadrin (Rav Rubin) cafe in town, dishing out American style breakfast and brunch fare all day long, it became a hotspot for Anglos to hang out for a bite and for Yeshiva boys to nosh between lessons.

Chalav U’Dvash also offers an event space, hosting private parties for up to 40 people. Their newest offering is their brunch boxes: a whole spread, packaged up, for anyone who wants the cafe’s food delivered as a gift to a loved one.

Somewhere between the ten years of home catering, the steep learning curve of a first-time restaurant owner, and a menu that refuses to cut corners, the cafe ended up where it is today. A loving back-and-forth between customers and cooks got it there, and it stands now as one of the very best in Jerusalem. Go for an iced coffee or American style frap, or stay for a sandwich and salad that’s as good as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

📍 Chalav U’Dvash (Milk & Honey)

• Location: 21 HaHagana Street, French Hill, Jerusalem
• Hashgacha: Mehadrin Rabbi Rubin (Dairy)
• Social Media: Check out their menu and daily specials on Instagram (@chalavudvashcafe)

*Kashrut status is subject to change over time. We always recommend verifying current hashgacha certification directly with the venue before visiting.