For those who might be in the area and like a good fish dinner, this is the place for you.
This Israeli Restaurant Is Bringing Jews and Arabs Together Over a Love of Grilled Fish
BY
ILAN BEN ZION
September 26, 2016
Never Miss A Story
The grilled Spanish mackerel’s skin is crispy, having come off the grill just moments before. Its flesh is firm, but tender and bursting with flavor. The tiny, toothy jaws are slightly agape. On the wall above me, Arabic calligraphy reads: “Here even the fish are laughing.”
The fish had been caught earlier in the day in the Mediterranean and lugged back ashore to the port of Acre in northern Israel. The hole-in-the-wall restaurant where it it’s been cooked occupies a snug corner of the former stables of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar—a.k.a. “The Butcher,” the Ottoman governor of Sidon who rebuilt the former Crusader capital and fought off Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799—but brings top-of-the-line cuisine to a fabled city that’s fallen on hard times.
Acre is overshadowed by the much larger city of Haifa across the bay. The city’s remoteness from Tel Aviv makes it an unlikely location to find culinary pioneers. And yet Savida, whose name is a Hebrew corruption of the Arabic word for cuttlefish, has found its home there.
Inside Savida. All photos by the author.
“The idea was to do something simple, straight from the sea,” Ohad Horvitz, one of the co-owners of Savida, says as he rolls a cigarette at a table in the cobbled alleyway outside. Mass commercial fishing and fish farming produce inferior flavors, he argues.
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This Israeli Restaurant Is Bringing Jews and Arabs Together Over a Love of Grilled Fish
This Israeli Restaurant Is Bringing Jews and Arabs Together Over a Love of Grilled Fish
BY
ILAN BEN ZION
September 26, 2016
Never Miss A Story
The grilled Spanish mackerel’s skin is crispy, having come off the grill just moments before. Its flesh is firm, but tender and bursting with flavor. The tiny, toothy jaws are slightly agape. On the wall above me, Arabic calligraphy reads: “Here even the fish are laughing.”
The fish had been caught earlier in the day in the Mediterranean and lugged back ashore to the port of Acre in northern Israel. The hole-in-the-wall restaurant where it it’s been cooked occupies a snug corner of the former stables of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar—a.k.a. “The Butcher,” the Ottoman governor of Sidon who rebuilt the former Crusader capital and fought off Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799—but brings top-of-the-line cuisine to a fabled city that’s fallen on hard times.
Acre is overshadowed by the much larger city of Haifa across the bay. The city’s remoteness from Tel Aviv makes it an unlikely location to find culinary pioneers. And yet Savida, whose name is a Hebrew corruption of the Arabic word for cuttlefish, has found its home there.
Inside Savida. All photos by the author.
“The idea was to do something simple, straight from the sea,” Ohad Horvitz, one of the co-owners of Savida, says as he rolls a cigarette at a table in the cobbled alleyway outside. Mass commercial fishing and fish farming produce inferior flavors, he argues.
Continue reading at:
This Israeli Restaurant Is Bringing Jews and Arabs Together Over a Love of Grilled Fish
