Jerusalem: Palace Restaurant (August 2018)

My spouse and I dined at the Palace Restaurant at the Waldorf-Astoria on each morning of our visit. The restaurant space offers seating at tables (a few of which share a padded banquette on one side), some of which protrude on a slightly raised floor into the center atrium area, for maximum viewing pleasure.

The breakfast buffet at the Waldorf is pretty amazing, and we were lucky that it was included complimentary with our room rate, because it is valued at about $45 USD per person per day (and possibly worth every penny!). The Israeli breakfast is thought to have originated on the kibbutz (a communal settlement). During the early days of the state of Israel, residents of a kibbutz ate their meals in a communal dining hall, where it was common for the residents to eat a light snack very early in the morning, work in the fields for several hours, then return to the dining hall for a hearty mid-morning buffet meal, similar to a brunch. By the 1950s, Israeli hotels were promoting the "Israeli breakfast" in a style similar to the kibbutz meals. The buffet breakfast at the Waldorf was a dairy meal (so there were no traditional breakfast meats like bacon, sausage, or ham [which weren’t even missed by these bacon-lovers!]), although cheeses, eggs, and fish were available. Although we don’t recall seeing shakshuka (poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce) at the Waldorf, we saw it at other hotels later in our trip. The buffet included items like Israeli salad (tomato, cucumber, peppers, onion), hummus (mashed chickpea dip), tahini (ground sesame dip), halloumi (cheese), fava bean salad, baba ghanoush (smoky eggplant dip), labaneh (yogurt), fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, radishes, onions, carrots), olives, fresh fruits, bread, pastries, and some heartier dishes (like noodle kugel); the list just goes on and on! The Israeli breakfast buffet is really something to behold! In fact, it has even been called "the Jewish state's contribution to world cuisine"!