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Food enthusiasts have much to celebrate when it comes to the Tower of David Museum's Eating in Jerusalem series of events, on offer on December weekends as part of the 2011 Hamshushalim festivities. With culinarians emphasizing the value of locally grown, indigenous ingredients prepared using traditional cooking methods, Jerusalem's dining scene has been on the rise in recent years.

At Eating In Jerusalem, renowned Jerusalem chefs and food experts engage participants in a discussion of eating and cooking in Jerusalem from biblical times to the contemporary Jerusalem kitchen. These talks are combined with tours of the Old City market with guides from the Tower of David Museum.

For the seventh year in a row, Jerusalem's top performance ensembles, restaurants, museums, auditoriums and cultural institutions are banding together to offer early winter entertainment in the form of Hamshushalaim's elongated weekends, free and discounted admission rates and extra-late hours. We're talking craft fairs, parties, multimedia exhibitions, belly dancing recitals, big rock shows and much more. This year's festival lasts for an unprecedented four weekends, and Eating in Jerusalem is arguably one of the top draws.

The colorful chef at Jerusalem's renowned Eucalyptus restaurant, Moshe Basson kicked off the series on December 2nd. Basson sees poetry in housing the events at the Tower of David. "Jerusalem food is a fusion of all the different cultures who live and lived here, and the Tower of David shows how life was in Jerusalem over the ages," he asserts. "It's a place that Arabs and Jews both pass on a daily basis, a place where the cultures touch, a place of connection."

Local food personalities leading the series include Holy City-themed cookbook author Elinoar Rabin, Judean Hills goat cheese master Shai Zeltzer, Talmudic-era eats archivist Tova Dickstein and upscale chefs Ezra Kedem and Shmeel Holland. Each one is a theorist with his or her own take on what Jerusalem food is all about. "Our approaches all complement each other," says Basson. "Sometimes they run parallel and sometimes they cross in beautiful ways. Ezra does a sort of evolution of what I'm doing. On the other side is Shmeel, who is taking the Jewish food angle. Sometimes people don't realize that Jewish food is not Israeli food, but I can also show where there are meeting places between these two kitchens that at first glance seem completely different."

With so many influences from over the millenia, and so many tribes being ingathered here, then, defining what exactly constitutes "Jerusalem food" can be tricky business. And clearly, not everyone agrees on what is and isn't traditionally local. "For people eating Jerusalem-style food for the first time there are a lot of surprises, because this city is probably the least homogeneous in the world, and this creates an interesting style of food," Basson notes. "In an extreme example of this, there are two Yiddish words for spices that are straight from the Arabic. They came into Yiddish in Jerusalem, and if you didn't know the history of them, you'd think they were old Yiddish words. During Turkish rule, Jews and Arabs lived in the same courtyards - now they all live in separate neighborhoods, but there are still Arab workers in the bakeries of Meah Shearim. There are some Arabs who know more Yiddish than native Israelis - it's a fusion that comes from all directions. We take from the Arab kitchens and they take from ours."

This fusion makes for tasty combinations, which may help explain the growing interest in local food, though Basson doesn't exactly see it that way. "People from Jerusalem always ate the local food - they won't say there's a growing interest," he says. "We're talking about people that come from outside that are more interested in it. And this is really a wider question. It's not just about Jerusalem, it's a worldwide phenomenon. With the internet, with easier travel, people have the opportunity to see more and they see the benefit of eating local. There is also the growing slow-food movement - which will be celebrating world slow-food day this weekend, and we will be serving special meals at Eucalyptus in its honor - which has also contributed to the growing interest in local food."