A ring of chewy bread studded with sesame seeds, split and filled with hard cheese or za'atar, baked around the clock at the Jaffa counter that predates the State of Israel by nearly seventy years.
Where to eat it: 1 restaurant across 1 city.
Ka'ak, a sesame-crusted ring bread, is recorded as early as the 10th-century Baghdad cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh and again in a 13th-century Syrian manuscript that gives three separate recipes, and ring-shaped, sesame-covered versions remain common across the Levant today. In Jaffa, the Abulafia family opened its bakery in 1879, baking ka'ak alongside pita and sambousak from a counter that has run ever since and become one of the city's standing symbols of Jewish and Arab coexistence. Abouelafia on Yefet Street still bakes the sesame-studded ka'ak fresh through the day and night, best ordered warm and cheese-filled straight from the oven.
Common allergens: Gluten, Sesame, Dairy, Eggs
Tip from the editors. Press the ring firmly into the sesame, don't just sprinkle; a light scatter falls off in the oven and leaves bald patches.
Abouelafia on Yefet Street has baked ka'ak, pita and sambousak in Jaffa since 1879, a round-the-clock counter that predates the state of Israel.
Worth the queueSesame-studded ka'ak filled with cheese
TipOrder the cheese-filled sesame ka'ak straight from the oven; it barely survives the walk outside.
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