Park Avenue Eatery Becomes Jerusalem Shuk

The scene this week at Barbounia. Photograph courtesy of Barbounia Restaurant.
The Mediterranean restaurant Barbounia has been totally transformed. This week, through Saturday night, executive chef Amitzur Mor is cooking up a dinner menu full of dishes inspired by Mahane Yehuda market, the Jerusalem shuk. Calling it Barbounia Cooks Jerusalem, the Israeli chef says the festival is a salute to that city’s rich culinary and cultural heritage.
“The coolest thing was the challenge of taking the old-school, almost forgotten food that’s mainly done in houses — they sell it down in the shuk, where they keep it on a burner all day — and we actually created those dishes and tried to get all the flavor, but made them restaurant dishes.”
Decorated to look like a replica of the near-century-old market, the restaurant on Manhattan’s Park Avenue South is serving three classic street beverages—fresh almond milk, tamarind juice, and grape juice — from the same big vending machines found in the shuk.
Every meal begins with a Jerusalem-style sesame bagel served with olive oil & zaatar. “Making the Jerusalem bagel, it’s not a joke!” Mor said. “It’s a serious process.”
There’s an Old City Meat Market Lamb Tasting and a Jerusalem fish koufta. Other shuk-centric fare includes a mixed grill of sweetbreads, chicken livers, and duck and chicken hearts, served with homemade pita; roasted baby eggplants with pine nuts, homemade labane, fresh herb salad, and sumac, and Old City Market Crispy Treats featuring falafel, veal cigars, and lamb kibbeh.
“How to roll a kibbeh, we’re pretty much there — but I’m sure some of those old grannies do it better,” Mor said.
For dessert, there are traditional Middle Eastern pastries and other confections—and of course chunks of halva, cut from oversize wheels.
“There was a lot of learning,” Mor said. “The day I learn something new is a good day.”
Liza Schoenfein is the new food editor of the Forward. Contact her at [email protected].
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
News Who would protect New York Jews better? Cuomo and Lander trade attacks on the campaign trail
-
News Rabbis revolt over LGBTQ+ club, exposing fight over queer acceptance at Yeshiva University
-
Opinion In Qatargate fiasco, Netanyahu’s ‘witch hunt’ narrative takes cues from Trump
-
Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.