Pardes Hanna-Karkur offers new food scene

I’ve lived in Israel for almost 40 years, and as far as I can remember, I’ve never been to Pardes Hanna-Karkur. I knew it had a reputation as a kind of hippie mecca but had no idea it was also a food destination.

With just 50,000 people and no hotels (although one is in the planning stage), it is surprising how extensive the food scene is.

“Pardes Hanna is a colorful community, and that is an advantage for us,” Eyal Kogan, the deputy mayor of Pardes Hanna-Karkur, told The Jerusalem Post. “We already have at least 30 restaurants, and it’s going to get bigger and bigger.”

The city offers a range of restaurants, from casual to chef-driven. Some are kosher with a kashrut certificate, others are kosher without a certificate, and a few are non-kosher. All of the restaurants I visited were kosher with a teudah.

We started our morning at Bagels, a food truck behind the Sonol gas station, owned by 26-year-old Eitan Vallach. He originally opened the bagel truck in Kibbutz Hagoshrim in the summer of 2025. After the war with Lebanon expanded, he moved south and ended up here.

Eitan's food truck imports its bagels from New York

What’s unique about his food truck is that Eitan imports the bagels from New York. They come 80% baked, and he finishes them here. As a former New Yorker, I can attest that the bagels were excellent. They also have great tuna salad and several other dishes. Definitely worth a stop.

We stepped into the Being Wellness Center, which is basically like a WeWork but with a sauna, ice bath, and smoothie bar. Wonder if you can do a Zoom from an ice bath?

Our next stop was Café Hatzvi, where everyone who wasn’t at the Being Wellness Center seemed to be, all of them pecking away at laptops. There is a large outdoor area, and the menu is vegetarian/vegan.

We tried two vegan smoothies: a viral blue one made with spirulina and a banana-cocoa-mango mix that I preferred over the blue one, even though the color was prettier.

Lentil hummus vs chickpea hummus

One of the more interesting dishes was lentil hummus, which tasted very different from chickpea hummus. We didn’t want to eat too much because we still had two more stops ahead of us.

Next was Hersheleh’s bistro, a chef-run restaurant run by three siblings and often visited by Israeli celebrities like Eden Hason and Hanan Ben Ari. The food is unique and creative, including raw fish dishes like tuna tartare, bruschetta, and fatayer, a Palestinian dish made from pockets of dough stuffed with spinach and cheese. Really outstanding food and presentation.

Our last stop was Pasta Loco, run by a husband-and-wife team, and tucked into a small strip mall. A laundry line runs through the center of the small restaurant, where Chef Gilad Vazana and his wife Adi make customers feel like family. Gilad and Adi have spent a lot of time in Italy, and it shows.

I love surprises and was happy to taste the Pasta Loco Surprise, which basically means whatever Gilad feels like serving you. In this case, it was inky black tortellini (the secret is zinc mixed into the dough) with black garlic served on a cream garlic confit with butter and pecorino. Just wow!

There was also one of the best pizzas I’ve had in Israel.

“We have a community, not customers,” Gilad told me. “I go to their bar mitzvahs and weddings. I want people to feel like I’m hosting them in my home.”