Jerusalem House

Great home style Middle Eastern food, customer of 15 years, best felafels in Adelaide. Great taste and well priced.

Have you got a big night out planned in town? Well, I have the best place for you. Jerusalem House is made for dining with friends. There is space for large groups at the back of the restaurant, maybe call and book in advance though. They are always busy!
So, the only way to dine here is to go the banquet menu. You will be asked, «how hungry are you?» to which you reply «very hungry». They will adjust the cost to your hunger meter. As for the last time I dined, I said I was very hungry and they charged 4 people $ 25 each. Bargain! Inclusive of the banquet menu is free BYO. So, what you have to do then is hop out of your seat, run across the road to the Rosemont Hotel street bottle shop and grab something to drink. Or bring something along with you; depends how prepared you are.
What you do need to prepare for is the amazing dishes served your way. Now, this is homely traditional Jewish food. So you will be given hummus, tabouli, falafels, koftas, green beans, battered fried cauliflower, etc… But this is the best quality you can get.
The Hummus is seasoned perfect with the right amount of acidity. The tabouli is super fresh and delightful. You just want a endless plate of Koftas. The beans are served with a tomato sauce that you need to dip your pita bread in. The Cauliflower has a spiced taste and is cooked perfectly without being broken down and heavy with batter. I could go on and on.
As for the service, it is fast. This restaurant is used to being busy, so they produce the food quickly and will continue bringing it out until your table is filled with mouth watering selections.
As for the décor, don’t let it put you off. It is not about the aesthetics here, it is about the food. I think that this restaurant has looked the same in the last 30+ years. True, my mum has photos from her hens night here!
So, please take my word for it. Bring your family and friends here and prepare for a great feast!
ps. forgive my terrible photos. I was too focused eating the food! ;)

Food was great and excellent value. Host was gruff and unfriendly. Service was fast. The interior was gloomy but loved the ambiance of it anyway. No cards, cash only.

Really great place, fantastic food, had the banquet and everything was great…
great service and good atmosphere

Bring a friend. In fact bring 10 friends here, as this place is made for feasting and banqueting.
Yes, the interior has not change since 1984 but stick a plastic orange booth seat in any other venue and you’d be calling it hipster. And didn’t you know green plastic cups and 70’s plates were retro baby?
Firstly, something no one has mentioned yet is that this place is BYO. Don’t expect to have any beers on the order here but if you want you can bring your own in.
However, as everyone has mentioned, the food is cheap, cheerful and relatively healthy. My favourite dishes are any kinds of chargrilled meat (especially the chilli chicken) — perfectly cooked and still tender to chew. The felafels are hands down the best in Adelaide with the perfect amount of spice and a balance of crispy exterior with moist interior. Sides of creamy hummus and unusually spiced rice and lentil salad with yoghurt and cucumber are perfect additions to the meal.
Now to be honest, I have always had attentive-​ish service here. Sure you’re not welcomed when you walk in the door and the speed at which you can order your food/​get a menu is a bit hit and miss, but staff have always been friendly and food has always come out quickly.

Jerusalem is one of my all-​time favourites. Cheap, healthy and tasty. Family-​owned and operated since the 70s, it is a Hindley Street institution.
The Good: It has the best falafels, bar none, in Adelaide. Moist, yet crisp on the outside. I had never tried the rice and lentil dish with the yogurt cucumber topping, but now that i have, I will have to have it again. SO much better than it sounds. The hummus, baba ganoush and meats are consistently good, fresh and tasty. And really reasonably priced.
The Bad: Nothing really. Well, the function room’s belly dancer has retired. People whinge about the service, but there is nothing wrong with the service once you realise that it is family-​run and these are hard-​working people.
The Ugly: Also hard-​working is the unattractive, yet superbly easy to maintain orange plastic table and red plastic booth seating (I’m pretty sure the booth seating used to be orange about 20 years ago). The décor is basic, but the hessian bags that used to drape from the ceiling (again about 20 years ago) have been updated and replaced by a sort of parachute silk. It’s all part of the charm.
Did I mention the food?

OK I have to admit that this is one of those rare restaurants that can get away with lousy service in a drab environment. Why — because the food is so good and affordable. It just works! Think of it as your own laughable Fawlty Towers Middle Eastern night out. These events really happened recently — no embellishment.
This was a favorite in my cash poor uni days but having been overseas for years we hadn’t visited for a long time and decided to give it a go after a friend said the service had improved — they now no longer gruffly bang the plate on your table!
First up a sweaty, grumpy, hairy waiter eventually gets to our table to take an order from my two lady friends and myself. With a simple question about what comes on one of the platter choices his reply is «Don’t know. Ask the chef»! So up I go to a small rectangular hole in the wall to get a curt answer to my question from a chef clearly offended at the impertinence anyone could have to distract him while working on one of his culinary delights — especially with such a dumb question.
Back to the table but this time the waiter throws his pad and pen in front of us and tells us to write down our order! No sooner do we start than he’s back to tear out a page while he retrieves his pad. The menu has an item for «wine» that was cheap so with no wine list and assuming it would be a barely drinkable house wine we order three of the beverages. The waiter corrects our ignorance and tells us to go to the hotel across the road to buy wine — this is the corkage fee. Relieved that we’ll now be drinking something decent I return with a fine wine, pleased to learn they don’t bang the plates on the table anymore. That tradition is now reserved for the unbreakable plastic cups you are forced to consume your expensive wine in. Stupid me for wasting fine wine on fine Middle Eastern food! Not sure what the corkage fee is for as you are required to open the bottle yourself!
No sooner have I grown accustomed to the strange feeling of fine wine and plastic playing with my brain, when this wonderful plate of food appears complete with delicious aromas that overpower the body odour of our waiter. But wait we have a fork each but no spoons to serve any of the food onto our plates. Stupidly I ask the waiter for additional cutlery having forgotten his response to anyone disrespectful enough to expect any service — «Ask the chef».
Back to the hole in the wall — with only a grunt to my request — the chef stomps to the far corner of the kitchen and stomps back with a single spoon. Having wisened up to the rules of this establishment I refrain from asking for another and we make do for the rest of the meal with one serving spoon, wonderful food, nice wine, and barely constrained chuckles while noticing the mixed reactions of other unsuspecting customers. Fantastic food and it’s so pleasing to see that the service has improved over the years!

This place is perfect for groups as there are melamine bench-​tables that can fit about five or six people on each side– it’s like a picnic bench, if picnic benches were plastic and crowded into a tiny, somewhat dingy eatery.
Order the banquet and you won’t be disappointed– there are plenty of options for meat-​eaters and vegos alike, and with the BYO policy, you control the beverages. When we ordered, the brusque young man simply asked, «Are you hungry or very hungry?» Our group of ten ascertained that we were «hungry» and our server disappeared, only reappearing once to drop off enough food for all of us to eat dinner twice. We didn’t see him again until one of our party searched the restaurant in an effort to procure a bill.
The hummus was particularly delicious, as were the falafel, lentils and cauliflower. Oh, and everything else.
You can eat a multi-​course feast here and walk out less than $ 30 poorer, but all the richer for having experienced a beautiful meal, albeit it in an ugly restaurant with less than inspiring service. Worth it!

It wasn’t until recently that I realised Jerusalem Shishkebab House actually existed. I must’ve walked past there hundreds of times, but failed to see that it was there all along. Well, now that I’ve seen it, I won’t unsee it… I think.
I heard about this place because I was searching for Middle Eastern restaurants, and I happened to notice that this one was causing a bit of a stir within the Muslim community. Of course, shishkebab is an Arabic cuisine, and there are claims that it has been «stoken» by the Jews. Whatever the dispute, this isn’t the Gaza strip — this is Adelaide, and the focus is on food here. Let’s put aside our differences and eat!
The food is undeniably good, and its authenticity puts the business’s roots into question. The service was so-​so, but judging by some of the other reviews, this place has a notoriously bad track record for customer service. I’m not all that fussy with service, so long as the food makes up for it — and thankfully here it certainly did.

A dapper looking gentleman, peculiar enough to be charming arrived to take my order, and in no time, an elderly looking ‘tea lady’ nervously brought the food and drinks back on a shaky tray.
No alcohol is served on the premises, but like any family barbecue environment, BYO is encouraged, and you may as well go for the boxed wine variety, as you will be drinking from plastic cups.
The vinyl covered tables, look like they had been salvaged straight from a school cafeteria.
They serve up a mean grill; It’s like dining at your grandparent’s place.

The décor is terrible, the seating bizarre, and the parachutes attempting to be a tent ceiling are as dirty as they are ugly. So why is it always packed? The food and the service.
Though the food is festooned upon plastic plates as fine as any $ 1 store could muster, the food is the most delicious middle eastern food in town. One could buy individual plates but the best way to go about your dining experience is to get a banquet (vegetarian option is available). The banquets cater to any size group and budget. All one needs do is say how hungry they are, point out how many and how much they’re willing to pay and the exhausted staff will have a satisfaction-​sized banquet to you in no time. They never get it wrong.
Jerusalem is a BYOB establishment so you can bring in your own alcohol if you desire to, but my friends and I always opt for the jugs of grape juice. I would not normally have grape juice with a meal, but it just seems right at the Jerusalem and it is always icy cold and refreshing.
This little dingy place is certainly known for it’s service, or more accurately, a particular server. I do not know his name but I believe he is the owner and is now (supposed to be) retired, although I have seen him there now and then. He is «the old man at the Jerusalem» and everyone has an «the old man at the Jerusalem» story.
Mine is this:
Whilst on a high-​protein diet I asked for a chicken dish with no rice, the old man was so taken aback by this request that he asked me several times whether I did in fact want rice. Eventually I managed to convince him and he went away visibly perplexed. He later returned with my chicken and an enormous smile emblazoned across his adorable old man face and stood there for a bit watching me start to eat my chicken. Unable to endure the weight of the surprise he had in store for me he burst out «look under the chicken» and doing so I discovered a bunch of rice, at which I laughed exasperatedly and he clapped his hands proudly saying «I knew you want rice!» as he walked off in triumph.
Later when my companion and I could not finish our meal he came back over and shook his head «I thought you girls said you were hungry?» we explained we had tried but he merely shook his head muttering «I thought you could do it» and bitterly stacked the plates, food and all, on top of each other before walking off with them in a nose-​in-​the-​air huff.
The coffee is awesome and there is a little something extra in it though the old man refused to divulge what that extra something is. All I know is that he insists it isn’t bergamot when I think it smells and tastes exactly like bergamot. In thinking about it, I guess it could be nutmeg. Whatever spice it is, it is as dandy a part of the coffee at the Jerusalem, as the old man is to the Jerusalem itself.

I’ve heard this place called an Adelaide institution more than once — and it sure has been around longer than I remember. It also looks like it has been around longer than I remember — the place is a little worn, but not gloomy. Like many restaurants that have been around long enough to become an ‘institution’ in Adelaide, the staff are a little aloof. Actually I think Jerusalem House are almost more famous for the bad service than for the food, but that somehow makes it even more charming, in a Black Books kinda way. I prefer aloof to obsequious, although once they did forget to bring my table any form of cutlery whatsoever. One of the waiters is a ten-​year old kid, he is less gruff, more cute.
I’m reasonably happy to put my complaints about the service aside, because 1) perfect service makes me feel even more uncomfortable and 2) the food is worth coming back for. It’s definitely not fancy, and the portions are regular-​sized, not huge, but there is something about it that makes me want to eat it again and again. I would suspect MSG but I think it is more likely to be tahini.
Personal favourites: fresh lemon juice (almost too natural, I usually water mine down a little, makes it go further anyway), the rice with lentils and yoghurt (it has a proper name, I forget), and the tahini cauliflower. The cauliflower is so good that my boyfriend made up an imitation recipe that is pretty damn close to the original. I keep buying cauliflowers and leaving them around the kitchen as a hint.
I forgot to mention the ceiling has a hilarious imitation tent roof made out of Hessian bags.