Shraga Cafe

The place is vegeterian but vegan friendly. They have some great vegan choices and the shef is open to ''vegsnize'' whatever you wish. Very nice place to sit

Shraga is a small pleasant place to sit (indoors and street side), with good location (on a side street right across from the Mamilla pedestrian mall), but overall the food is unexceptional and doesn't offer too many vegan options. In Israel many restaurants have a standard dairy menu, on the bright side, Shraga tries to shake it up with a few specials, but the base menu is a slightly limited version of the average kosher dairy joint. The portions here are good, but the prices are about 5 shekels ($1.50) overpriced.

As sandwiches are Shraga's signature dish, my girlfriend tried the "Purple", which had fresh Mozzarella, pesto and some veggies. The contents were fresh and the bread was excellent, but the flavor was lacking. I tried the Radiatori Pasta with Peas & Zucchini in a psuedo-pesto sauce. Shraga clearly uses high quality pasta, but could definitely have improved the dish with a more varied medley of veggies and a more finely spiced, or summery, sauce. I also tried the Mini-vege burgers, which (instead of Ketchup) came with an Apricot sauce with a nice little zing to it. They also on occasion make a vegetarian kubeh soup.

Although the flavors and contents are underwhelming, the service is lovely and they definitely put effort into what they serve. With a plentitude of dairy restaurants in Jerusalem, I won't be rushing back to Shraga, but it does offer a quiet respite from the hectic shopping crowds, offering a nice alternative to the nationwide restaurant chains.