The Lower Haight is getting a Jewish-inspired restaurant from a rising star chef

Horovitz, a 2025 semifinalist for the James Beard Emerging Chef Award, launched Hadeem three years ago and has taken the concept exploring the food traditions of the Jewish diaspora to wine bars and restaurants across the Bay Area. Now he’s putting down roots in a neighborhood that’s already dense with trendy food and drink destinations, including pizza hot spot Jules, cocktail bar Stoa, and wine bistro Bar Jabroni.

“I think that our offerings just fit into the Lower Haight so well,” Horovitz says. “I’m really excited to be shoulder to shoulder with so many great options.”

Hadeem will serve dinner and weekend brunch, with cocktails and primarily California wines.

But Horovitz doesn’t want customers to expect a classic Jewish deli or kosher kitchen. “Hadeem is really primarily a concept focused on the cooking of California,” he says. “The Jewish identity part is how we season and how we elaborate on those themes.”

Horovitz, who grew up in Los Angeles and has cooked at a handful of top San Francisco restaurants, has a multicultural background. His Greek and Lithuanian mother is from New York, while his father is Polish and Russian by way of Miami. His stepmother immigrated from Romania. As a result, his menus tend to pull in flavors from all over the world, from sour cherries and miso to black sesame and sauerkraut.

Intricately woven loaves of challah might be flecked with nori, while scallion pancakes get rolled into a knish. “I think my biggest focus is always reminding everyone that the stories that I’m telling with food are from a very personal perspective,” Horovitz says. “I’m trying to tell a story of sitting on the couch eating dolmades out of a can, watching cartoons at my Yaya’s house — that’s such a specific moment.”

Horovitz hopes to find a coffee partner to operate in the restaurant during the day. “We’ll want people to come in and have a little nosh and kibitz,” he says, noting that he’ll offer fresh-baked babka to go with the drinks. In addition to serving the Jewish sweet bread as a plated dessert — a slice of butter-griddled tiramisu babka has become a Hadeem classic — Horovitz will have seasonal riffs and twisted loaves to take home. “I think it’s a perfect analogy for what we do at the pop-up,” he says of the brioche-like bread. “It is an identifiable structure, a platform for us to riff on a fun idea and still be relatively relatable.”

In the coming months, there will be more Hadeem pop-ups, including an Oct. 10 collaboration with Jules chef-owner Max Blachman-Gentile, and two December events hosted with Mister Jiu’s and Moongate Lounge chef-owner Brandon Jew.

Horovitz will preview Hadeem’s babka program with an Eight Nights of Babka series in December, during which he’ll sell a limited number of loaves for pre-order during Hanukkah. Flavors will include chocolate tiramisu and pumpkin-miso cheesecake, as well as collaborations with top restaurants including The Happy Crane (char siu), Square Pie Guys (pizza), and Bernal Cutlery (matcha and black sesame).

Horovitz spent more than a year searching for the right space to open his first restaurant, schlepping food and equipment from the Mission to Nob Hill, Healdsburg, and even Rochester, New York. But the upside, Horovitz says, is that after years of menu writing and recipe testing, he’s got a clear vision of what Hadeem will be.

“We’ve done events that have been in wine bars with just a hot plate and a dream,” he says. “And I think it allowed me to focus on [finding] a really defined boundary of what our food is and what our isn’t.”