Matityahu Landstein’s beer lair first opened its doors in 1935, making it one of the oldest bars (if you can call it that) in Israel. Rumor has it that the original owner was the brother of the owner of Elimelech, a legendary bar on neighboring Wolfson Street that unfortunately did not survive.  

Generations of spirited patrons have sat here, drinking shoulder to shoulder. Regulars have included neighboring Levinsky Market merchants, poets, and bohemians such as Tzvi Shissel and Haim Gouri — who wrote a book titled “Tales from the Wine House,” capturing conversations he overheard at Mati’s over the years.

Landstein is a man of many legends. He arrived here in 1973 after many years in Brazil, where he claimed to have done “things that are not talked about.”  Before that, he escaped the Nazis in the forests of Poland and, started drinking a bottle of vodka a day with the partisans — a habit he kept up until he died at the age of 90. Today, his son Itzik and grandsons Shmulik and Lior carry on his legacy, still serving Goldstar beer, along with the finest pickled fish in the universe and a few other specialties.

A charcuterie plate. Photo: Noam Preisman

“Mati’s Place offers everything a person needs — great beer, a little something to eat, and, most importantly, a moment to pause. This is a place where curses that sound like poetry (although it’s not the same since Mati’s death) and conversations that sound like university lectures. What’s local here?” writer Hilik Gurfinkel asks and answers: “We are all Galicians. We all came from somewhere that isn’t here, and if there’s a place that exemplifies this, it’s here. The very essence of the Jewish Diaspora is present: Ashkenazi owners serving a clientele that is mostly not Ashkenazi anymore. And everyone lives together, happily, joyfully, and drunkenly, until their last day.”