Savor Scout › Food guides › Israeli food
How to find good Israeli food
Israeli food is a mix of Middle Eastern, North African and Eastern European Jewish cooking, served abundantly — the table usually fills with small salads before anything you ordered arrives.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Hummus as a main — Warm, silky, generous, with whole chickpeas, tahini and good olive oil on top, eaten with pita. Grainy, cold hummus is the industrial version.
- Salatim — A spread of small salads — pickles, cabbage, roasted aubergine, matbucha. Variety and freshness show the kitchen's range.
- Pita that is fluffy and warm — Baked in-house or delivered fresh daily, with a proper pocket.
- Amba and schug — Pickled mango sauce and green chilli paste. Their presence means the sandwiches are being made the Israeli way.
- Sabich — Pita with fried aubergine, egg, hummus, salad and amba. A place that does it well usually does everything well.
What to order
- Hummus with toppings — Mushrooms, meat or ful on top.
- Sabich — The Iraqi-Israeli sandwich.
- Shakshuka — Eggs baked in tomato and pepper, for breakfast or lunch.
- Shawarma laffa — Wrapped in a large flatbread.
- Schnitzel — Israeli-style, often in pita.
Where to find Israeli food
Open listings put 64 Israeli restaurants across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 12 Los Angeles, CA 4 Las Vegas, NV 4 Philadelphia, PA 3 Miami, FL 3
Campuses with the most within a mile
New School University 8 NYU 7 FIT 6 Baruch 4 Jefferson 2 MIT 2
A few to start with
- Combina — New York, NY
330 W Broadway, New York - Miznon — Los Angeles, CA
317 S Broadway, Los Angeles - HaSalon Las Vegas — Las Vegas, NV
3325 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas - Dizengoff — Philadelphia, PA
1625 Sansom St, Philadelphia - Jaffa Miami — Miami, FL
140 NE 39th St #241, Miami
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for sabich, salatim, schug, laffa and Israeli, and treats hummus-specific reviews as a strong signal, since a good hummus is the clearest tell of this kitchen.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
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