Hope you're having an amazing day.
It's Mark Wiens.
I'm in Jerusalem, and today I'm gonna take you on the ultimate food tour of Jerusalem.
I'm gonna meet up with my friend David, who is the hungry tourist.
He's an amazing food lover and we're also gonna meet up with one of his friends whose name is Rafram, and he knows Jerusalem, especially the food like the back of his hand.
So we're gonna take you on the ultimate Jerusalem food tour.
My name is Rafram Haddad.
I was born in Tunisia, I live in Tunisia, but I grew up here in Jerusalem, and I know about food, about culture.
And David, the hungry tourist?
Yeah.
He just travels for food and people, because food without people is nothing.
Okay, so actually we're on the outside of the Old City right now and we're stopping to eat our first meal in Jerusalem.
Three loaves?
Yes.
Here you go.
Here you go.
Here you go.
Here you go.
Here you go.
Here you go.
One, two, three.
So what's the name of this place?
Aikar Maui.
Aikar Maui.
Yeah, the origin of this place is from a village called Ankarem, which was a Christian village outskirts of Jerusalem.
And during 1948, of course, they were deported.
We're starting off this Jerusalem food tour with some legendary hummus.
And oh, I cannot wait to dig into this.
He whipped up that hummus and then he put it into the bowl.
He added some chickpeas on top.
He added some olive oil.
First bite of the hummus.
Oh, it looks amazing.
You can see how whipped that texture.
Look at that texture, how fluffy it looks.
Oh, that's a sizable first bite.
Oh, wow.
Hummus is a relatively simple ingredient dish, but where you really notice the differences are the different textures and the different ratios of the ingredients.
That is one of the fluffiest.
It's not like silky smooth.
You can actually taste the texture, feel the texture of the chickpeas in there.
And then, even though you see a pool of olive oil, it doesn't feel oily at all.
That hummus is absolutely awesome.
And that pepper is wonderful.
It's, oh yeah, that heat starts to build.
That kind of heat that sort of goes up your nose a little bit.
I love it, it's wonderful.
This guy has to be the best hummus I've ever had.
No, but this is actually one of the best in the world, yeah.
Okay, I'm going in for an onion next.
And onions are the perfect scoop.
You can get a lot of hummus in a wedge of onion like this.
The onion is very mild. a little bit sweet, and just loaded with that hearty hummus.
Basically anything that you dip in that hummus will be amazing.
They have a separate bowl full of, it's like a sour chili sauce to add to your hummus as well.
That chili is spicy though.
That hummus was absolutely insane.
The texture I've never tasted hummus so fluffy in my entire life, and you know it was fluffy because how he whipped that up, that was just insanely good.
That's a lot of bread.
Almond will be great.
We're stopping next for a quick almond beverage.
Look at how foamy, frothy this is.
Oh yeah, that's very almondy and quite sweet.
It has that kinda like almond jelly taste to it.
That's refreshing.
We're moving on now to a deli shop that has cheese and all sorts of interesting things.
We're at this very small shop in Jerusalem now, and they are known for having some of the best products.
Wow.
Oh, it's so, it has like a fuzzy, outside edge, more kind of juicy than a regular cucumber.
Wow, it's great.
It's so good, yeah.
Wow.
It has a little shell, okay.
Wow, thank you very much.
Grab one of these.
So you take off the little outside shell.
Oh, it's almost like a soybean.
A little bit drier.
Mmm, so this is like a snack.
The owner at that shop is so nice.
We just spent 15 minutes just sampling all of his fresh ingredients, and then he gave me a little bag of za'atar, which is a thyme blend with sesame seeds in it, to take home.
So that's really kind of him.
What an amazing fresh produce shop that is.
And right down the street is the next restaurant that we're coming to.
The bread here is very, very unique with Jerusalem.
I'll show you.
Oh, it's unique to Jerusalem.
Yeah, it's very thin, very thin.
They are the only people in the area that's using this bread, this thin bread which is actually.
You eat it and you don't feel hunger, you know.
You don't feel heavy, this bread, because it's like a paper.
Yeah.
And it's amazing bread.
They make it on a sage, you know, like upside-down pan.
There's some cucumbers in here, some tomatoes, some onions, and then he added in some sauces.
This looks incredibly good.
I'm gonna grab a bite over there where the meat is the thickest.
Oh, that's incredible.
All the tahini in there.
You can taste that nuttiness.
And the beef almost has like a salted, almost like a jerky taste to it.
The bread is almost tortilla.
This is almost like a burrito.
Absolutely amazing.
What I really liked about it was that bread.
It really was like a tortilla.
It wasn't like the thick bread so it was kind of light and yeah, it doesn't make you too bloated.
That meat inside was delicious and then the combination of those cucumbers.
Oh, food is amazing and people are so nice here.
We are now walking to the old city of Jerusalem.
Wow, this is absolutely incredible.
The ancientness, the history here, it's amazing.
We are in Old Jerusalem now.
Oh, and greeted by some bread and vegetables.
I already love it.
It's so ancient, just look at this walkway.
And then you walk through here, you can smell the aroma of coffee, you can smell freshly baked bread,
Oh man, this is amazing.
And look at this alley and this staircase.
It's so incredibly good that we have Rafram with us today, who's guiding us through the ancient city of Jerusalem, because there's so many little hidden passageways and alleys.
Look at this place we're walking down right now.
What's your name?
Amir.
Amir, nice to meet you.
Do you also vlog?
Yeah.
You do?
Oh, okay.
Mark, M-A-R-K, Wiens, W-I-E-N-S.
See you, man.
We just walked down this flight of stairs, through some narrow passageways and alleys and straight to a kebab restaurant.
He's starting everything for us now.
He's lighting the fire.
Oh, he's lighting the fire for us?
We're first customers.
First customers of the day.
This room is 1,000 years old.
Yeah.
It has like a cave.
Actually, because it's hot outside, but it's stone in here, you can feel the coolness.
Yeah.
Oh, is there an AC?
I asked him if the hummus is good.
He asked me to taste it.
He is about to start making kebabs.
And you can see he has a fresh bowl of hummus, which he ground by hand.
And yeah, they're just opening up for the day today.
So he's making the food for the first time and lighting up the grill right now.
And is this lamb?
It's a mix of lamb and beef.
Oh, wow. and he's been making the most awesome handmade kebabs that I've ever seen in my life.
He mixed up that meat, then he chopped it up with a giant sword, he added all the spices and then he put them onto skewers along with onion and tomato.
I can't wait till that meat hits the fire.
That is gonna be one of the world's greatest aromas, I can already guarantee.
He's busting out the sword again.
Oh yes.
The meat before is gonna make a salad.
Now look at this food processor.
Look at this beauty.
There's absolutely no better way to make a salad than with a giant machete.
I'm not gonna say you have to make salad this way at home, but that is the next level of chopping up a salad.
He just rocks that sword back and forth, back and forth and literally in just minutes he's gone from coarse chopped vegetables to a really fine mince of tomato and cucumber and all that parsley in there.
Just straight up sesame, sesame.
It's like a cream with a salad inside.
Taste test.
Oh, thank you.
Oh.
Oh, that is the most insane salad I've ever had in my life.
Oh, wow.
It's so creamy.
Oh, that.
That's almost indescribable.
You can taste the sesame seeds, the creaminess, the nuttiness.
That parsley comes in really nicely.
It's almost foamy.
Oh, that's amazing.
He's a beautiful man.
That meat is sizzling away and every now and then, when a little driplet of oil, of grease falls down into the coals, you get that smoky aroma of the meat.
I'm at that kind of like state of mind where I can hardly wait and the anxiety, the food anxiety, is hitting me strongly right now.
The wait is over, the meat is ready.
He dished us out some hummus and then some of the salad that we saw him prepare.
He actually bought the bread across the street from the baker.
That meat just looks insane.
Little meatball shapes and little one biters.
You can actually see all of that parsley within it as well and how it's caramelized.
The meat has caramelized on the edges where it was grilled.
Oh, that is just wondrous.
Oh, the meat just collapses in your mouth.
You can taste onions in there.
And what it really focuses on is that slow grill over the fire, giving it that wonderful smoky, greasy umami flavor.
Oh my god.
That's insane.
Oh wow.
Next level.
This is the type of restaurant that you should travel around the world just to eat at.
This is... Really juicy.
Amazing.
Let me get one more forkful of that salad and you can just see how thick and rich that is from the sesame seed paste, the tahini.
The vegetables are so light and then he's made it into a sauce that's just wrapped it all together.
It's a little bit like tasty and nutty and so fragrant.
Okay, next I'm gonna try some of this hummus.
And this is like a totally different looking hummus from what we had earlier this morning.
And you can see that this hummus looks a little more smooth than the hummus we ate in the morning.
I'm just from looking at it.
And then it's all ground by hand.
And definitely it is more.
It's more thick and a little more sticky than the hummus we had in the morning.
Totally different.
That salad is award-winning.
It's for my city, my parents.
That was special.
That is an experience of a lifetime right there.
It would have been impossible to find this place.
That is a restaurant where it really is a privilege to eat at a restaurant like that and a huge thank you to Rafram for taking us there.
Next up, we walked over to a place called Zalatemo Sweets, and this is another ancient, generations-old sweets shop, but he only makes one thing.
Mutabak Mutabak Mutabak Mutabak, Mutabak.
Zalatimo family Zalatimo family, Zalatimo family.
Zalatimo sweets Zalatimo sweets.
So he really slaps out the dough until it's paper thin, and then he folds it over, and then he adds in some cheese and I think he has another couple of variations as well and then he folds it up, he bakes it, puts on a little bit of olive oil, and it's really amazing to watch him make this art.
Thank you.
His family has been here for over 200 years making the same dessert, 200 years.
And ours should be coming out of the oven very quickly, but starting with a cup of coffee.
Oh yeah, I love that cardamom in there.
I love it.
We got two different versions, one with nuts and one with cheese, and you can just see that paper-thin dough and then he bakes it and then he tops it with some kind of syrup or honey and then dusts it in powdered sugar.
Oh, this one's cheese.
Look at that crispy, crispy dough.
Oh, it's so thin.
What do I need?
The dough is so, so thin, almost like baklava and crispy.
But then you have the contrast of the salty cheese with the sweet honey topping, that crispy dough.
It's so crispy.
Okay, and the next one, this one is nuts.
But I'm like really impressed how delicate and how like subtle contrasting the flavors are together.
It's really, really impressively good.
If you look on the inside of this one.
Oh yeah, you can see, I think it was mostly crushed up walnuts that he added in here.
Listen to that crunch.
That is amazing.
I'm not a huge lover of sweets, but this is perfect.
After 200 years, they know exactly what they're doing.
It has that beautiful mix between crunchy and gooey.
The nut one is good, but I think the cheese wins.
Thank you very much.
That was amazing.
That was amazing.
Wow, that was just impressively good.
So good, so delicate, so refined.
What a another gem in jerusalem.
This entire old city of Jerusalem is just a maze of alleys and ancient lanes.
It's a whole bazaar.
You have modern shops selling all sorts of footwear and clothing and kitchenware, and then there are restaurants mixed within here.
You could just get lost and just explore these alleys.
If you just keep your eyes open walking around the old streets of Jerusalem, you'll just see just incredible things and just just admire the history of this city.
And if you keep your nose open, you'll get whiffs of coffee, you'll smell the za'atar, you'll smell the different spices as you're walking through this alley.
It's just an overdose of all things that you can see and smell and hear.
We are walking back out towards the Damascus Gate and we're gonna now drive somewhere to eat another lunch.
What's up man?
How are you?
What's your name?
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
We're stopping just to buy some fruit right at the entrance, right at Damascus Gate.
And she gave me a sample before we buy.
Oh, that's so juicy and sweet and sour.
Mmm.
That's incredible.
It's called pita peach.
Pita peach, okay.
Mmm.
That's delicious, too.
It's not too sweet, kinda a little bit starchy.
Getting a kilo of this, too.
Thank you.
We're leaving out of the Damascus Gate, and so Jerusalem is a walled-in city.
Old Jerusalem is a walled-in city, and so the different gates are named for the roads that went to the different cities.
So this gate actually leads to Nablus in Palestine, and then also on to Damascus.
We're going to Mahna Yoda market now.
It's like the main market of West Jerusalem.
We drove over to West Jerusalem and we're gonna have lunch at a market over here now.
You wanna get inside?
Is it okay just for a few shots?
Just to get some close-ups on the food here.
This is the keema.
Potato, kebab, spinach, onion, and aubergine.
You have meatballs.
You have lungs.
This is lungs.
Oh, that's amazing.
Yeah.
Lungs.
You have meatballs with fresh tomato sauce.
Wow.
There you have beef sofrito.
Osaka, great dish.
Eggplant stuffed in meat.
Wow.
You have the kube.
You have the okra.
You know what's okra?
Yeah.
We're eating our third plate of hummus today.
There's some tahini.
Fresh salad, they just cut it, and falafel.
These are sort of the standard starter dishes that we're getting and then after that, will be served the more of those stews and those dishes that they cook down there.
Third hummus of the day.
Oh, that one is incredible too.
This one is nice and it kinda tastes garlicky to me.
Tomato salad, there are tomatoes in here, there are onions, there's parsley.
Oh, lots and lots of lemon in there.
That's what makes it.
It's so refreshing.
Some house pickles.
Wonderful.
We didn't do any ordering since David knows them.
I just told them, just give us good food.
That's what he said, just give us good food.
And let's see what will happen.
Dish of kebab, eggplant, potato and spinach.
Green beans, rice and lentils.
This is the moussaka.
White beans.
Potato and beef and onion.
Cool.
They brought us enough food to cover the entire table.
We've got some of their specialty dishes.
It all looks incredibly good.
I can't wait to start digging in.
And just those appetizers, those starters were excellent as well.
Azura.
Oh, this is the name of the restaurant. a dish, Turkish origin.
This is gonna be so amazing.
It just slices with your spoon like butter.
It's so tender and then topped with that minced meat.
Oh man.
Wow, that looks good.
That eggplant is ridiculously soft. and then it has a real kind of like cinnamon sweetness.
Oh, look at that interior.
Come take a look at that inside.
It looks like minced meat on the inside.
It looks like a burger on the inside, with eggplant just surrounding it and just that soupy tomato sauce.
You need a spoon to eat this.
Yeah, just a spoon.
Spoon is the best way.
What I love about that is that the tomatoes are very tart.
They have a nice sourness to them.
And then again, you have that really, really tender, creamy eggplant.
Okay, this dish is called keema.
Oh, that bite, I think I managed to get, oh, potato.
I forgot about potato.
I gotta re-spoon, I have to re-spoon.
Oh yeah, it's like... Thermalized.
Mmm, mmm.
The entire thing is just completely soft and the onions melt in your mouth, the eggplant melts in your mouth, the meat melts in your mouth and even the potato melts in your mouth.
The flavor is a little bit plain in it, but it really focuses on the main ingredients.
Rice, lentils, and onions.
Let's try a bite of this.
This is comfort food, you know?
This food takes you back to your childhood, to your mother.
We're going now to Oxtail.
Again, you see it, it's just falling off the bone.
It's been sitting on the fire.
You can actually see the bones have just fallen out already.
They're little oxtail bones.
One of my personal favorite meats is oxtail, because every single time you eat oxtail it just falls off the bone.
Oh, you can taste the red chilies in there.
Oh yeah, and that meat is just ultimately tender.
And there's meat in there, there's potatoes.
Mm uh, carrots cooked for a long time and then the meat is added and garlic and potato.
It's really good.
It's again.
Everything is very tender.
The meat is tender, the potatoes just melt in your mouth.
That's another sofrito.
This is the chicken sofrito.
It's a little bit spicy.
One more dish, excellent.
Oh, and you can smell like almost a, almost a slight curry powder aroma.
The side of the drumstick.
You know what it tastes like.
Wow.
It falls apart.
Those potatoes actually, they're not dry at all.
I'm loving all of the food, but I gotta take another bite of this.
This is a masterpiece here.
It's like an eggplant sandwich with just a burger on the inside.
It's incredibly good. and it's so saucy as well.
But probably my absolute favorite dish of this entire meal is one of their specialties and I think this is the dish that the name of the restaurant is actually named after.
This is the eggplant with the minced meat on top of it.
Oh man, this is an award winner here.
The texture of that eggplant is just unbelievably creamy.
Thank you very much.
Walking out of the restaurant or sort of like stumbling out of the restaurant.
That was spectacular food.
That was a meal where I actually had to move to the next hole on my belt.
If you love to eat, this is a place you're gonna wanna come for sure and have a feast.
We're just walking through the market now.
There's everything you can imagine at this market.
A lot of fresh produce and some serious desserts.
Look at just these piles.
These are all Iraqi desserts?
Oh, just that one over there, okay.
It looks similar to jalebi.
So the dessert is called Zengula.
Zengula, it's Iraqi dessert.
All right.
Wait, just let me do a video of yours here.
Like a coil deep fried and then some kind of a syrup on it.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Yeah.
It is like crispy and it sort of juices with like a floral tasting syrup.
It's very sweet and very crispy.
We have just come over to the Wailing Wall, which is the Western Wall of Old Jerusalem, and this is one of the holiest sites in the Jewish faith and it leads up to the Temple of the Mount.
Thank you very much.
This is the Western Wall, built by King Herod the Great.
On a spur of the moment decision, in an effort to work off some of the amazing food, we decided to explore the fascinating Western Wall Tunnel.
While above ground you can see about 60 meters of the wall, underground you have a chance to walk along 485 meters of the original wall built in 19 BC by King Herod.
We're walking through this narrow passageway.
It's pretty long.
Right next to the wall and we pass.
Do you have a YouTube channel?
I do.
Randy!
What's your name?
What's your name?
Mark Wiens.
Mark Wiens.
Okay.
This.
This is unbelievable.
Just ancient, ancient tunnels.
People walked in these same lanes, in these same tunnels, like two and a half thousand years ago.
This is really, really cool.
And we're on our way to the aqueduct.
That water is extremely clear.
And there are even some fish down there.
And there's water falling from the ceiling.
That was incredibly cool though, that ancient It's a really tight tunnel.
After emerging from the depths of the tunnels.
Unfortunately, the Dome of the Rock was already closed for the evening.
But luckily, from a nearby school, we were able to get an impressive view of the Golden Dome a sacred site and a breathtaking view.
Finally, before heading to dinner, we drove to the top of the Mount of Olives to see an incredible sunset against the beauty of old Jerusalem in the background.
We had a nice relaxing afternoon, worked off a little bit of that food from the Jerusalem food tour and we watched the sunset from the top of Mount Olives.
Now we're having one last meal to complete this Jerusalem food ultimate food tour, and this is a place that is, I think the reservations are really hard to get, so luckily he knows the chef.
Again, he knows everyone and we got a reservation.
We're gonna have dinner here.
This is the fish station, this is the grill station and this is the cold station.
Like fish, you know, fresh fish and everything.
The aromas coming out of this kitchen are insane.
Oh, I can't wait to see what they're gonna bring us out for dinner tonight.
Yeah.
They just brought us out the first course and it's served on a block of wood and all sorts of different little appetizer dishes.
Oh, and I think that's some of the ahi sashimi there.
Oh, okay.
Oh, that's melt in your mouth.
This is burrata, which is a type of cheese stuffed.
It was never done before in the world.
Look at this.
These are signature dishes of Polenta.
This is a giant scallop.
Oh, that blend of spices is amazing in there.
What is that, foie gras?
Yeah.
Oh, it's deluxe.
Rossini with foie gras on top.
Oh, that just sliced effortlessly.
Oh, that is tender, juicy supreme.
Oh, and ridiculously creamy and rich.
That's the bite.
That's the bite.
Open your mouth.
Come on, open your mouth.
That is unbelievable.
We've come to the end of this incredible meal and dessert is just insane.
I love the hand of the chef here on the platter.
I may as well go for the hand of the chef right now.
Oh yeah.
That's like a cheesecake almost.
What's up man?
How are you?
Good.
Just finished with dinner in Jerusalem.
That is an amazing restaurant.
The staff are so friendly and so generous, and so they all are having a great time as they're cooking.
The food is top notch.
The ingredients were extreme quality.
It was a very loud and lively kind of restaurant, but really, really good food.
And today has just been an amazing Jerusalem food tour.
I still can hardly believe that I was eating in Jerusalem.
And everything from the hummus that we had in the morning all the way to the kabobs.
What else did we?
Oh, that giant feast at lunch to dinner.
The food has been fantastic in Jerusalem and this is no doubt, one of the most fascinating cities in the entire world, one of the most important cities in the entire world, and it was really a privilege and honor to have a chance to visit.
Jerusalem.
A big thank you to David Khalifa.
He's The Hungry Tourist.
I'll leave his link in the description box.
A big thank you to David and also to Ramraf for showing us a couple spots in Jerusalem.
And thank you very much for watching this video.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Please remember to give it a thumbs up if you.
I enjoyed it and I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below.
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Good night from Jerusalem and I'll see you on the next video.
Thanks again for watching.
