The Bar You Have to Know to Find
There is no sign above the door on Florentin Street. There is a doorbell and, if you press it between eight in the evening and four in the morning on a Friday, a small panel slides open and someone asks if you have a reservation. You do not need one — but the theatrical pause is part of the experience at Bellboy Bar, Tel Aviv's most quietly influential drinking establishment, which opened in 2021 and has since become the place that serious cocktail tourists come to find.
Florentin is Tel Aviv's answer to Brooklyn's early-aughts energy: artists and designers in rent-controlled apartments, independent coffee shops with hand-drawn menus, galleries in converted workshops. It is the last neighbourhood in the city that still feels like it belongs to people who actually live there. Bellboy fits this demographic precisely — founders Noa Shapiro and Amit Katz designed the room themselves, salvaging the bar counter from a demolished pharmacy in Jaffa and the banquettes from a cinema in Haifa. The result is 30 seats of confident, considered design that cost a fraction of what it looks like.
The cocktail menu changes every six to eight weeks, always structured around a central theme that Shapiro — who holds the head bartender role — researches obsessively. Past themes have included Mediterranean botanicals of the Ottoman period, citrus farming along the Sharon coast, and a collaboration with a Negev winery exploring the flavour chemistry of desert-grown grapes. The current menu, titled "Levant in Translation", explores how Ottoman and Arab flavour traditions survived into Israeli cuisine and what happens when those flavours are applied to modern cocktail technique.
The result is a menu where za'atar bitters appear alongside Cypriot brandy, where house-made dibs el-rumman (pomegranate molasses) is aged in small oak barrels for twelve weeks before use, and where a clarified lamb fat-washed bourbon draws on the Levantine tradition of kawareh — braised trotters — as a culinary reference. It sounds more challenging than it tastes. Everything on the menu is delicious. That is the achievement.
Levantine Flavour Through a Modern Lens
Shapiro trained at the International Bartenders School in Amsterdam before returning to Tel Aviv in 2018 and working at three of the city's established cocktail bars. When she and Katz opened Bellboy, their stated intention was to build a drinks programme rooted specifically in place — to make cocktails that could only exist in this city, in this neighbourhood, drawing on these specific ingredients and this specific culinary inheritance. Two years in, they have largely succeeded.
The bar stocks local arak alongside imported spirits, always choosing local producers where quality allows. Za'atar, sumac, and harissa appear in bitters and tinctures made in-house. Fresh fruit from the Carmel Market — a ten-minute walk from the bar — appears in season. The ice programme is taken seriously: large format blocks for spirit-forward drinks, crushed for tropical builds, a spherical mould reserved for the evening's most important order.
Walk-ins are welcomed with the same warmth as regulars. The bar team speak English fluently and will walk through the full menu without impatience. For those who prefer to be guided, a tasting flight of three smaller drinks — a rotating selection by the bartender — is the best introduction to what Bellboy is attempting. For the adventurous and the hidden gem hunter, this is a must-visit stop in any serious Tel Aviv itinerary. Make a note of the address before you arrive. The door gives nothing away.
Four Drinks That Define Bellboy
12-week barrel-aged pomegranate molasses, arak, fresh lemon, egg white, orange blossom mist. Deep, tart, aromatic. The drink that most regulars begin and end every visit with.
Sharon coast jaffa orange cordial, dry vermouth, sparkling wine, house za'atar tincture. Light enough for the Tel Aviv heat, complex enough for a cocktail bar of this calibre.
Lamb fat-washed bourbon, date syrup, sumac bitters, smoked orange peel. Sounds provocative on paper, lands with perfect balance. Silky, savoury, long-finishing.
Three smaller drinks curated by the bartender for your palate and pace. The best way to understand the full menu. Communicate your preferences — the team listens and delivers.
Tel Aviv & Beyond
Bellboy's no-sign ethos puts it in distinguished company. Explore all Tel Aviv bars for the full city picture. Similar commitment to the hidden gem format — small, unsigned, extraordinary — can be found at Arpa Bar in Istanbul and Door 74 in Amsterdam. For Levantine cocktail exploration across the region, our hidden gems category profiles the bars that don't advertise but deserve your attention. The Revolver in Bali shares the same 22-seat, reservation-not-required philosophy in a very different context.