Food in Israel is Levantine at its base — the same hummus, tahini, pita and salads eaten across the region — with layers added by Jewish communities arriving from Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Poland, Ethiopia, Russia and elsewhere, and by Palestinian cooking that predates all of it. Attribution of individual dishes is politically contested and worth being aware of.
Hummus
Not a dip but a meal, served warm in a shallow bowl with a well of olive oil, topped with whole chickpeas, ful, mushroom or egg, eaten with pita and raw onion, usually before two in the afternoon. A hummusiya serves little else. Every city has an establishment that people will insist on and another they will dismiss.
Breakfast
The Israeli breakfast, a kibbutz inheritance, is eggs, several salads, cheeses, bread, olives and coffee, and it is enormous. Shakshuka, eggs poached in spiced tomato and pepper, arrived from North Africa and is eaten all day.
Street food
Falafel in pita with salad, tahini and pickles is the standard cheap meal. Sabich, a Iraqi Jewish dish of fried aubergine, hard-boiled egg, salad, amba mango pickle and tahini in pita, is the better one. Shawarma, jachnun and malawach from Yemen, and burekas from the Balkans fill out the rest.
The markets
Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem and Carmel and Levinsky in Tel Aviv are the food centres, and all three have become restaurant districts in the evening. The market is where the cooking of the different communities is visible side by side.
Sweets
Knafeh, malabi, halva by the slab, rugelach from Marzipan bakery in Jerusalem which sells them warm, and sufganiyot at Hanukkah.
Kosher
Kosher establishments do not mix meat and dairy, so a meat restaurant has no cheese or cream and a dairy one has no meat. Many close for Shabbat. Non-kosher restaurants exist in Tel Aviv and Haifa in large numbers and in Jerusalem in smaller ones. Arab-owned restaurants operate normally on Saturdays, which is useful to know.
Drink
Israeli wine has improved beyond recognition since the 1980s, particularly from the Golan and Judean Hills. Craft beer is widespread. Coffee means either a strong Turkish-style botz or an Italian-style cafe hafuch, and it is taken seriously.
Where to eat cheaply
A hummusiya, a falafel or sabich stand and a market food stall are all under ten dollars and are better than most sit-down restaurants at three times the price. Restaurant prices in Tel Aviv are genuinely high, and the cheap end of the food scene is where the interest is.