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Once a Jerusalem nightlife pillar institution, the bar known as Mike's Place is returning to Jerusalem with a party on October 28, with revelers raising their glasses to celebrate the return of an old friend and a soundtrack provided by resident blues band SoBo.

For many of those who came of drinking age in Jerusalem in the 1990s or since, Mike's Place was the bar that felt like home. The bar went through several incarnations since Canadian journalist Mike Vigoda opened a Russian Compound hole in the wall in 1993. In the past decade, the Mike's Place empire has expanded to Tel Aviv, where there are now two branches in operation, and even to the silver screen, with the community of faithful Mike's Place regulars featured prominently in the 2003 indie buzz movie The Holy Land.

But when the Zion Square building that housed the bar was slated for demolition, the flagship Jerusalem location was forced to close its doors, co-owner Gal Ganzman telling the local press, "We've made so many great friends. I want to tell them all we'll see them soon. A lot of people have lost their home away from home."

And now, thanks to architect and former Mike's Place regular Reuben Beiser, the bar is coming back to the Holy City. Beiser will be opening the latest incarnation of the Jerusalem Mike's Place at 33 Jaffa Road, next to, and under, the Village Green restaurant, another mainstay of Jerusalem Anglo culture. As Beiser explains to GoJerusalem.com, bringing Mike's Place back to Jerusalem was inevitable. "They never wanted to close, but it happened at a time when there was no place else to go," he says of the demolition order last winter. "I got involved, and the pressure came on to really find a new place. It took a year."

Now that the space has been found and the bartenders are already stocking the fridge with beer, the question arises, How will this newest Mike's Place Jerusalem incarnation compare to the four previous ones? Beiser says it'll be both a return to the basics of Vigoda's original hole-in-the-wall concept, and also something more ambitious than ever (the last version included a pool table, three floors, two bars, and a projection screen with a live feed from the music stage). "We want this Mike's Place to be a full restaurant, which we never had before, so in that way we're upping our ambition," he notes. "On the other hand, we wanted the same warm, living room feel that has always been a part of Mike's Place. Old [patrons] are going to find a familiar home, and a new generation will discover us."

Traditionally, Mike's Place Jerusalem has opened just in time for the Happy Hour set, but at the new one, a full kosher menu (courtesy of chef Menachem Katz, one of the co-founders of the Sideways bar back when it was called Sugar Hill, just one block up towards the Russian Compound), which will also be on offer during lunch hours, will include both classic American bar food and some Tex-Mex offerings.

The new kosher certification, which requires that the bar be closed on Shabbat, may compromise Mike's Place's positioning as a place for Jerusalem's international set, but Beiser believes that the bar has gained more than it's lost in this trade-off. "There will be people looking for us on Friday night that will be upset to find us closed, but we wanted to provide a full Mike's Place experience in Jerusalem," he explains. "And in order to do that, it had to be a kosher kitchen. We have large religious crowd, and even the international crowd knows that Jerusalem is a special city... and in Jerusalem, the only option is to be kosher."