In Tel Aviv, brunch is not a lazy add-on to the weekend. It is the weekend.
Half the restaurants on this list only serve it on Friday and Saturday, and some of them for a window of three hours or less. That is not a scheduling quirk. Friday morning is when the city exhales, when the shuk is loudest, when everyone you know is sitting outside somewhere with coffee and too much bread on the table. If you miss the window, you wait a week.
So this guide leads with the hours. A few spots do serve on weekdays, which is worth knowing if your free morning lands midweek. The rest are weekend only, and worth planning around.
Here are nine breakfast and brunch restaurants Tel Avivians actually go to, from a restored Templar winery in Sarona to a courtyard buffet hidden behind Ibn Gvirol.
Claro
Claro sits inside an 1886 Templar building in Sarona, a restored stone hall that once housed the first industrial winery in the German agricultural settlement the neighborhood grew out of. Chef Ran Shmueli runs it farm to table, with a menu that changes daily depending on what comes in, cooked in an open kitchen you can watch from your seat.
Brunch hours: Friday, 09:00 to 14:30. Saturday, 09:00-12:00
It is a big, bright, high-ceilinged space, and the weekend brunch fills it. Come for the building as much as the food. Very few restaurants in Tel Aviv let you eat inside 140 years of the city’s history.
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Haachim
Haachim has been on Ibn Gvirol since 2011, and its breakfast happens in a green courtyard tucked behind the street where you would never think to look for one. There is no fixed menu, instead there is a buffet laid out as an open display: sweet and savory mixed together with no order and no hierarchy, and you walk up, look at all of it, and take what you want.
It runs six mornings a week, which makes it one of the few genuinely reliable weekday options on this list, and the courtyard tables go first.
Brunch hours: Sunday to Friday, 08:00 to 12:00
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R48
R48 is an eleven-suite hotel on Rothschild Boulevard, built into a 1933 Bauhaus building that took the better part of a decade to restore, with a garden by Piet Oudolf, the landscape architect behind the High Line in New York. Breakfast is served in the hotel’s Chef’s Table restaurant, and the part most visitors miss is that you do not have to be staying there to book it.
It is deliberately small. The meal opens with a basket of pastries and breads from the bakery, a platter of fine cheeses, fruit salad, fresh squeezed juice, a cocktail and hot drinks, and then you choose a main from a menu that runs from the classics to things you have probably never been served at breakfast. The hotel has eleven suites and the restaurant has not many more tables than that, which is why it tends to be spoken for well in advance.
Brunch hours: Friday to Saturday, 08:30 to 11:30
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George and John
George and John is the restaurant on the entrance floor of the Drisco Hotel in the American Colony, just up from Jaffa. The names belong to the two brothers who founded the hotel in 1866, not to any chef. The building spent eight years being restored by a team of conservators before it reopened, and you feel that the moment you walk in.
Breakfast here is a set spread rather than a menu you order piecemeal. A buffet of freshly baked breads, pastries and cakes arrives alongside seasonal salads, fine cheeses and house-made spreads, with fruit, cold-pressed juices, yogurt and granola on the side, and then you choose one main. The Benedict comes on brioche with leek and apple jam, and the shakshuka is made with fried eggplant and manchego. It is included if you are staying at the Drisco, and bookable if you are not.
Brunch hours: Sunday to Thursday, 07:30 to 10:30. Saturday, 10:30 to 12:30
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Café Europa
Café Europa occupies a small building at 9 Rothschild Boulevard that belonged to the Chelouche family, among the founders of the first Hebrew city, and it looks out over an intimate courtyard set back from the boulevard.
The weekend service is called Ultra Brunch and it is built around a rotating continental buffet: sweet and savory pastries, cheeses, cured meats, and seasonal fruit, replenished through the morning. The five-hour window is the most generous on this list, so it is the one to pick if you are not a morning person.
Brunch hours: Friday to Saturday, 11:00 to 16:00
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Alena
Alena is the restaurant at The Norman on Nachmani Street, open since 2014. Breakfast is a la carte rather than buffet, and it covers both halves of what an Israeli morning can be: shakshuka on one side of the menu, eggs Benedict on the other, plus fresh baked goods, juices, and proper coffee.
The seat to ask for is on the outdoor terrace under the Alena palm tree. The hotel’s wine list was named the best in Israel four years running, which tells you the standard the kitchen is held to, even at seven in the morning.
Brunch hours: Sunday to Saturday, 07:00 to 11:00
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Mashya
Mashya is named after mace, the spice, and sits inside the Mendeli Street Hotel a couple of blocks off the beach in Kerem HaTeimanim. The room is all natural materials and soft light with vines running along the walls, designed to echo the market nearby.
Weekday mornings are a la carte. The weekend is the one to plan for: you choose a main, and it comes with a full buffet, juice, and a hot drink. The shakshuka is made with eggplant and chard, the croque madame with lamb bacon and chili butter, and the French toast with caramelized banana. There is also a short morning cocktail list, mimosas and an espresso martini among them.
Brunch hours: Sunday to Thursday, 08:00-11:00. Friday to Saturday 10:30-14:00
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Dallal
Dallal has been on Shabazi in Neve Tzedek since 2007, among the preserved buildings and narrow lanes that make the neighborhood the prettiest place in Tel Aviv to eat outside. It runs its own bakery and patisserie a few streets over, which shows up on the table.
The brunch menu is French-leaning and generous: a Comté omelette, soft scrambled eggs with asparagus, salmon Benedict, a Normandy pizza with zucchini and a poached egg, and steak and eggs if you are properly hungry, with a crêpe Suzette and a French toast waiting at the dessert end.
Brunch hours: Monday to Saturday, from 11:00
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Café Cucu
Café Cucu sits under the Cucu boutique hotel on Dizengoff Square, part of the square’s revival, and it is openly going for little Paris in Tel Aviv. The menu shifts through the day, starting as brunch in the morning and sliding toward a Paris-style dinner by night.
The brunch menu earns the Paris comparison and then quietly undercuts it. There is a corned beef croissant with poached egg and hollandaise, a pain perdu with salted caramel and yogurt, and a crispy polenta with mushrooms and beetroot hollandaise. Then there is the shakshuka, which they have named Mon Cheri and serve with challah and tahini, and that one tells you exactly where you actually are.
It is open every day from nine, which makes it the easiest yes on this list when you have not planned anything. Note that tables are held for two hours and they will release your booking if you turn up more than twenty minutes late.
Brunch hours: Sunday to Saturday, 09:00 to 15:00
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Ready to Taste TLV Magic? Your Food Tour Starts Here
The fastest way to understand Tel Aviv is to eat a long brunch in it. Somewhere between the second coffee and the last piece of bread, the city stops being a place you are visiting and starts being a place you are in. Book the Friday tables ahead, keep a weekday spot like Haachim or Alena in your back pocket, and let the morning run longer than you planned. Nobody here will rush you.
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Written by the Birthright Israel Blog team, your insider guide to the food, places, and experiences that make Israel unforgettable.
