Not too long ago, you'd make the trip to Jerusalem for a handful of reasons: to seek out monuments of faith, like the Western Wall or the Dome of the Rock; or to attend a distant relative's bar mitzvah. You might even take home some overpriced hamsa keychains for friends and family. The city, one of the oldest continually inhabited metropolises in the world, just didn’t have the cachet of Tel Aviv or Eilat; it couldn’t offer visitors fusion cuisine, or hot hotel rooftop bars—until now.
Within the last decade, the city—whose reputation has long been marred by fits of sectarian violence and tugs of war (see the dust kicked up in December 2017 when the Trump administration announced it would relocate the U.S.'s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv)—has slowly managed to shift the conversation toward its restaurant and hotel scenes, thanks to serious upgrades in hospitality and service. At both the national and municipal levels, the government has offered incentives to prospective hotel brands (like streamlined construction processes) to encourage development. The country is also spending big—about half of the Tourism Ministry's NIS 1.1 billion budget for 2016 and 2017 (roughly $310 million)—to market the country and its constellation of cities (see the "millennials discount package" that offers twenty- and thirtysomethings discounted tours of Jerusalem), and it's all to signify that the city is, truly, open for business.
Seismic social shifts have also changed the way travelers can experience Jerusalem. It's no longer verboten to eat out on Friday nights, and the younger generation—who once looked north to Tel Aviv to seek fortunes and futures—is actually sticking around. “Jerusalem has an excellent university. In the past, you’d study [at Hebrew University of Jerusalem], then leave," says Inbal Baum, founder of Delicious Israel, a food-focused tour operator working in and around Jerusalem. "You’d go to Tel Aviv because that’s where the jobs and the nightlife are." The recent shift, she says, is the result of “a lot of passion for Jerusalem from young people. They want to see it succeed.” They’re returning to their roots, or opting to stay put, to bring up the city that raised them.
Perhaps the most obvious sign the city is embracing its youthful new identity is the rise in dining options that can, and are, pulling rank among global cities with decades of culinary prestige. “With food, Jerusalem is changing western perceptions of the country,” says Michael Solomonov, an Israeli-born, James Beard Award–winning chef, whose Philadelphia restaurant Zahav arguably put Israeli cuisine on the map in the U.S. “Jerusalem is a destination now, and it’s not just the obligatory religious pilgrimage with the shot of Old City and Temple Mount. The level of hospitality is one thousand percent better than what it was just a few years ago.”
You can even feel the changes in the winding alleyways of Machane Yehuda Market, an open-air labyrinth of food stalls near Jerusalem's city center that was once, the chef says, “where people would buy dried fruit and discount underwear.” Now you’ll find one of the buzziest places in Jerusalem: People crowd market bars, drink Israeli wine, and eat dinner at Crave's, a kosher take on Western comfort food, or Steam Kitchen & Bar, home to freshly steamed Chinese-style buns and American-style smoked meat sandwiches. “At night, it’s a social destination in itself,” Solomonov adds. "There’s actually cool stuff happening now and this was the start of it.”
One of the market’s most famous spots, Machneyuda, which opened in 2009, is often credited with “shifting the food scene in Jerusalem,” says Baum. But now, there’s also Yudale, its sister restaurant and bar, and a good bet for a lively scene once the sun goes down. There’s more to choose from all over the city, like chef Moshe Basson's Eucalyptus, which serves up a modern take on local cuisine (think chicken stuffed with figs, or fire-roasted eggplant drizzled with an aged pomegranate syrup) plus restaurants Chakra and Mona. Mamilla Hotel’s Happy Fish, a Mediterranean-inspired seafood spot is “world-class, and what chef Cobi Bachar is doing there is incredibly exciting,” says Solomonov. “[For] so long, high-end restaurants in Jerusalem were terrible and not a good representation of Israeli cuisine," he says, since they often abutted popular tourist sites. "But then gentrification started happening and young people started moving to Jerusalem, super excited about food. So the restaurants had to step up."
Another sign pointing to the city’s renaissance is the influx of new, heavy-hitting design hotels. Though there have always been a few staples—most notably the King David Hotel in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood, overlooking the Old City—that offered visitors the privilege of vacationing in style, the Jerusalem of 2018 has options. There's the Mamilla Hotel, which opened just beyond the Old City walls in 2010, designed by noted Italian architect and designer Piero Lissoni, and its sister property, the recently refreshed David Citadel Hotel (also by Lissoni, and just outside the Old City walls) which has a sushi bar and "Feng Shui-inspired" spa. In 2014, the Waldorf Astoria opened its first and only Israeli hotel just a few minutes' walk from the Jaffa Gate, with the Herbert Samuel Jerusalem Hotel, the Israeli brand's first spot in the city, following downtown in 2016. The 24-room Villa Brown also arrived downtown in 2017, sumptuous fabrics and all, as did the Orient Hotel, farther south in the German Colony neighborhood, and big-brand luxury chains Four Seasons and W Hotels have openings slated for coming years.
Much of this push for development can be credited to Nir Barkat, who was elected mayor of Jerusalem in 2008, and again to a second term in 2013. "Since he was elected, he has placed a great emphasis on developing tourism to this city, as an economic engine, as an engine for social change, but also because there are billions of people around the world who have the dream of visiting Jerusalem, and we want to help them realize this dream," says Ilanit Melchior, director of tourism for the Jerusalem Development Authority.
Under Barkat's tenure, the city has seen the establishment of a light rail system; an annual marathon; an international film festival; and even a Formula One Road Show. In February 2017, the city launched its first direct bus route to Ben Gurion airport—a belated though major development—and it expects to roll out a zippy, 28-minute high-speed rail link between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in mid- to late 2018, which could spur day trips to the city from Israel's de facto party capital. (Nothing like this currently exists; right now, it'll run you anywhere between an hour to a little over two hours, plus a transfer, to ferry from one to the other via train, and somewhere between an hour to an hour and forty minutes should you decide to brave snarls of traffic and drive.) But the push goes beyond a few shiny cultural offerings or increased transportation: The Israeli Tourism Ministry, for example, is working with the Interior Ministry to make it easier for tourists to obtain visas, especially those from China and India, and after seeing a massive uptick in Chinese tourism due to the addition of a non-stop flight on Hainan Airlines to Tel Aviv from Beijing in April 2016, added a second route from Shanghai in September 2017.
Though these efforts have largely been welcomed, the city remains home to complex religious, political, and social tensions that continue to shape its outward image: In the summer of 2017, local terrorists committed or attempted attacks in the Old City, both near the Temple Mount (also called the Noble Sanctuary, the holiest site for both Jews and Muslims) and Damascus Gate, claiming the lives of at least two Israeli police officers. The assaults were a postscript to sectarian violence in the area, dubbed the 'Wave of Terror,', which began in the fall of 2015. But Joe Yudin, CEO of Touring Israel, says safety risks in Jerusalem have been exaggerated, especially when compared to other international cities. "I'm asked almost every day about [it]," he says. "But overall, anywhere in Jerusalem—whether the Arab, Jewish, or Christian neighborhood—is relatively safe [when you look at the statistics]."
Yudin concedes that some locations within the city, like the Damascus and Lions Gates outside the Old City's northern entrances, and the City of David, in Silwan, East Jerusalem, are flashpoints—more prone to unrest than others—but it's not something that he, nor the higher-ups in the Israeli government, tries to hide. "Several countries across the world have become victims of terror and nobody can predict where it is going to strike next," Amir Halevi, Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Tourism, told the Press Trust of India in March 2017. "In Israel, we have a lot of experience in dealing with it which makes tourists feel safe here." Even the recent embassy announcement, Yudin thinks, likely won't create as many skirmishes (violent or otherwise) as media speculates. "I believe the embassy move will come and go with little incident. Of course there will be some protests for a couple of days [...] after the move, and security forces will monitor the situation very closely," he says, "but I'm confident that this shouldn’t cause too much concern, as long as we're careful as usual."
So what will all of this amount to? According to the Jerusalem Development Authority, there are currently 13,000 hotel rooms in the city, with 1,500 now in the process of being built; the plan is to add at least 5,500 more by 2022, a 42 percent increase. It's an important (if ambitious) step, especially given that the country broke traveler records in 2017, welcoming 3.6 million tourists (a 25 percent overall increase from 2016). And Jerusalem is a city on the brink, once again: There’s a renewed energy and a hopeful outlook, an infectious spirit of hometown love that’s evident even to those that aren’t from there, that will continue to flourish despite (and perhaps, in spite of) any sweeping pronouncements.
“Everyone has been talking about the fact that Jerusalem’s coming up, and it’s really happening,” Avigad says. “This is Jerusalem’s time. It’s ready to show that it’s unique and edgy and cool and multi-layered.” But you don’t know what it’s really all about until you’re there, or “until you feel it,” adds Solomonov. "The thing about food, about hospitality, about culture is that it speaks to the people. This is Jerusalem’s moment.”
