Old City Street Cart · Sesame Bread Ring

Ka'ak Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Bagel)

Photo: Zivya / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

It's shaped like a bagel but never boiled — the dough is baked long and oval, big enough to share, then dipped in a small paper cone of za'atar.

An oval loaf of chewy, sesame-crusted bread is baked fresh each morning and stacked on rolling street carts, sold by vendors stationed at Jaffa Gate and around the Old City walls. It's handed over with a twist of paper filled with za'atar for dipping.

Why it's made this way: Vendors have sold the bread from carts at the Old City's gates for generations — a tradition with roots going back to Ottoman-era Jerusalem — making it one of the few Jerusalem street foods still tied to a fixed selling spot rather than a market stall.