The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
SHUK MAHANEH YEHUDA
In the days just before the COVID-19 lockdown, I was lucky enough to take a tour of Mahaneh Yehuda with two talented women: Chen Koren and Neta Livneh. Chen likes to lead “meals that are also tours,” and Neta, a dietitian and photographer, kept me in line regarding calories.
I love visiting the shuk in Jerusalem. I breathe in the clear air and feel like I’m feeding my soul with all the goodness found in the holy city.
Mahaneh Yehuda is made up of four sections, Koren explains. The first is the open-air section that starts on Agrippas Street and reaches all the way down to Jaffa Street at the other end. Parallel to this is the covered section, which includes fruit and vegetable stands, restaurants, coffee shops and pubs. At night, you’ll find this area full to capacity with people young and old. The third section is the Iraqi shuk, and the fourth the Gruzini, or Georgian, shuk.
The Gruzini shuk is pretty small, and most of the stalls are closed. There’s one pub and a couple of vegetable stalls.
The Iraqi shuk includes a large courtyard where you’ll find lots of fruit and vegetable stands that offer high-quality, seasonal produce, as well as the restaurant Azura. You’ll never find any fruits that are not in season, as you can in the covered part of the shuk.
Our first stop that day was Hava Brothers Bakery, which has been operating for over 50 years. It makes pita bread without yeast that is baked by sticking the dough on the sides of the oven. It also makes special dried pita bread that traditionally was eaten on long journeys, since it lasts for a long time.
Next was Marzipan Bakery, a popular stop on every tour, which has been making its syrupy rogelach for over 30 years. These rogelach are famous the world over, although if you walk through Mea She’arim, you’ll see that traditional rogelach are crescent-shaped (the word “rogelach” in Yiddish means “horn-shaped”) and are dry and not sticky at all. The modern Jerusalem-style rogelach that you find at Marzipan is a blend of Eastern and Western Jewish culinary cultures.
Our third stop was Malawach, which serves a fusion of traditional and modern Yemenite tastes, while fun, rhythmic music plays in the background. You can top your malawach with spicy grated tomatoes, dried fried onion, slices of hard boiled eggs, fried eggplant, tehina, freshly chopped parsley and a whole host of other surprises.
Next, we made a quick stop at the Basher family’s fromagerie, a cheese shop where you can taste unusual offerings, such as pesto gouda. One interesting fact I learned here is that most cheese makers in France are women. The shop offers over 600 types of cheese that hail from all over the world – and all of them are kosher.
By this time, it was midday, and we were all getting a little tired. So Koren steered us toward Azura, which she said is a must for anyone who truly wants to experience the flavors of Mahaneh Yehuda. The restaurant has been in operation for close to 70 years, and for most of these years it has served lunch to
people working in the shuk. At Azura, the Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish dishes are prepared in huge pots that are cooked over kerosene burners.
After lunch, we stopped by Kahn Hamutzim, which was founded in 1948. Here we tasted herring, olives and all sorts of pickled items, in addition to a piece of Yerushalmi kugel that was cut off of a huge block. Next, we got to smell a variety of spices that are sold at an Ethiopian spice shop.
The makeup of Mahaneh Yehuda is constantly changing, as stalls are sold and reinvented as pubs. One creative entrepreneur named Keren started a business venture in which people all around the country can order an assortment of products from the shuk. These are great presents for friends who have just given birth or are stuck at home in quarantine. These wooden boxes contain fresh fruits and vegetables, cheese, roasted sunflower seeds, baked items – in other words, all the good stuff you can find at the shuk.
You can probably imagine that it’s difficult to convince shop and restaurant owners in the shuk to share their trade secrets, so below you will find three of my own recipes that come as close as possible to food I tasted while visiting the shuk.