Restaurateur and Locavore Ofra Ganor

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Updated . Photo by and courtesy Avi Ganor

Respected restaurateur Ofra Ganor is the brain behind Manta Ray, the venerable and hugely successful bastion of beachside dining in Tel Aviv. With Ofra at its helm, Manta Ray is sunny, gorgeous, runs like clockwork, and serves superb food (under the watch of head chef Ronen Skinezes).

“From the start, my motto was: no deep-fried fish, no hummus. And no fries. I wanted another kind of restaurant.”

— Ofra Ganor

While she is not a professional cook herself, Ofra has over the years opened several other well-respected eateries in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and she says: “I’ve done my homework.” She understands food extremely well, as does everyone who works at her restaurants. Ofra notes: “From the start, my motto was: no deep-fried fish, no hummus. And no fries. I wanted another kind of restaurant.”

Manta Ray > 

Manta Ray restaurant. Photos courtesy Avi Ganor.

The Culinary Improvisations of Erez Komarovsky

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Erez Komarovsky in a still from the film The New Cuisine of Israel.

Erez Komarovsky is a man who naturally brings together all the best aspects of food. Erez built his reputation as a baker; he is credited with instigating Israel’s “bread revolution” some twenty years ago. Bakers tend to be a finicky and exacting breed, but on the afternoon we spent in his kitchen, few ingredients were measured out: dishes were tossed together by hand, tasted frequently, thoroughly enjoyed, and lightning bolts of inspiration were accepted as a matter of course. In the film The New Cuisine of Israel you will get to visit him at his beautiful home at Mitzpe Matat in the Upper Galilee, overlooking Israel’s border with Lebanon. We had the privilege of visiting him there to cook and eat, but our day with Erez began early, at the marketplace in Akko.

“Erez brings a spirit of improvisation, integrity, and exuberance to the experience of food.”

We met for breakfast at the busy Sa’id hummus shop, where the waiters  clearly knew Erez and gave him a perfunctory nod. From there, we strolled over to the market fishmongers, who glanced at Erez askance as he inspected their wares, seeking out the brightest eyes and scales, the bluest claws, the perfect aroma—that is, a slightly salty non-aroma in the case of the freshest fish. He spoke with them in Arabic, asking (it was clear) what other fish they had in the back, then examining that secret stock with a raised eyebrow and haggling like the pro he is, and finally coming away with a couple of pounds of blue-silver calamari and a weighty, sparkling sea bass, which he hefted matter-of-factly into an ice cooler in the back of his truck.

About an hour’s drive to the north, Erez showed us around his beautiful, somewhat chaotic stone home. We wandered the tiers of his vegetable patches, carrying baskets and filling them with dark-red cherry tomatoes, kale, Thai basil, scary-looking tiny hot peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, and more.

Working with whatever he has at hand, Erez riffs like a brilliant jazzman. His kitchen is light and open and well stocked, although like many cooks, he mostly uses only a few favorite tools. The mortar and pestle are indispensable (everything from basil and garlic to peppercorns is purposefully smashed), as are a couple of good, super-sharp knives.

Just before the bass, onions, tomatoes, kohlrabi, basil, and crushed salt and pepper were flung in the taboon, they received a liberal drizzling of honey from the hives of the beekeeper down the road and olive oil from a neighbor’s press. Sometime later, greens, vegetables, and fish were piled into a gorgeous knoll on a platter, and we sat down to a truly unforgettable meal.

Erez brings a spirit of improvisation, integrity, and exuberance to the experience of food. We think that is the finest way to cook and to eat.

Sa’id Hummus >

Stills from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.

Hotelier and Restaurateur Uri Jeremias

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Uri Jeremias of Uri Buri restaurant and Efendi Hotel, Akko. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Uri Jermias (owner of Uri Buri restaurant and the Efendi Hotel , both in Akko) is a formidable figure: tall, broad, white haired, with a benevolent face and a white beard that reaches to his waist. Uri is nearly always visible at his restaurant, moving pots and pans in the kitchen with the assurance of a masterly orchestra conductor, or strolling among the tables advising guests about how to structure their meal.

“Uri Jeremias is nearly always visible at his restaurant, moving pots and pans in the kitchen with the assurance of a masterly orchestra conductor.”

Like Erez Komarovsky, Uri is a consummate and resourceful extemporizer. His chief collaborator is the sea. Like all great cooks, Uri knows when a perfect ingredient should be allowed to shine on its own: “Simple fish made in the most basic manner,” he says, “can be enjoyed no less, and perhaps even more, than Black Sea caviar, or a blowfish arriving on a direct flight from Tokyo (flying business class, of course).”

We keep Uri Jeremias’s Uri Buri cookbook at hand in our own kitchens—partly because of Uri’s culinary philosophy. Yes, there are recipes in the book, but more than half of it deals with how to think about food—fish in particular—once you know some basic rules, how to be discriminating, respectful, and inventive in the kitchen. Like love, these things come through in the dishes you serve.

Uri’s interest in ad-libbing started early. He tells a story:

When I was young, I hitchhiked around Europe, and I decided not to have any plans. When someone asked me: ‘Where are you going?’ I’d say: ‘Wherever you’re going.’ I traveled to different cities, met lots of people, and so on. After a few months, I came home, and friends asked me, ‘Did you see Mont St. Michel?’ or ‘Did you see this or that?’ I said no. My way of traveling was completely different. It was not about seeing the wonders of the world. It was to meet life.

It is with this same sense of adventure that Uri cooks—and we, his lucky guests, get to be his fellow travelers.

Uri Buri >

Efendi Hotel >

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi and the Foods of Jerusalem

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Cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.

Yotam Ottolenghi, perhaps Israel’s most famous chef, no longer lives in Israel. Yet from his perch in London—where he runs four hugely successful restaurants—Ottolenghi and his cooking partner, Sami Tamimi, have brought wide attention to the cuisine of this country and this region, and recently in particular to that of Jerusalem, their hometown. Ottolenghi grew up in the Jewish western part of Jerusalem and Tamimi in the Muslim eastern part. They share a deep, visceral connection to the city’s food: “The flavors and smells of this city are our mother tongue. We imagine them and dream in them,” they write in their inspiring 2012 cookbook, Jerusalem.

“[Perhaps] hummus will eventually bring Jerusalemites together, if nothing else will.”

— Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamim

The city is, of course, an intense crux of cultures and belief systems that, to put it mildly, have a difficult time interacting harmoniously. But, as you’ll read again and again here, that very crosscurrent has led to an expansive and variegated food culture that results in unlikely but often delightful combinations on the plate: Eastern Europe mixes with North Africa, Yemen with India, Uzbekistan with France, the United States with Iraq, and so on. Indeed, as Ottolenghi and Tamimi point out, food is one of the valuable unifying forces here: “It takes a giant leap of faith,” they say, “but we are happy to take it—what have we got to lose?—to imagine that hummus will eventually bring Jerusalemites together, if nothing else will.

Cheese-maker Shai Seltzer's Delicious Alchemy

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Shai Seltzer in a still from the film The New Cuisine of Israel

Shai Seltzer has the mien and the aura of a holy man, or perhaps a wizard: he is often swathed in white clothes, his head wrapped in a white turban. He has a long, snowy beard and wears a pair of scholarly wire spectacles. For a man with a snowy beard he is, however, extremely spry with a wild sense of humor that borders on the naughty.

“When you are making cheese, you are painting.”

— Shai Seltzer

An afternoon with Shai at his Har Eitan Farm, west of Jerusalem, will likely be filled with talk: botany (of which he is a scholar), history, politics, Slow Food (he is of course an activist), cheese-exhilarating enzymes, the life of goats, international cheese conferences (which he regularly attends, and where he is lauded as a superstar), and more. He will expertly pace the sampling of cheeses through your visit, so that the palate will not be overwhelmed—“Slowly, slowly,” he advises. Plainly, these creations still please him greatly, although he must have tasted them hundreds of times.

Botanist, activist, sage, gastronomic magician, Shai is also a teacher who takes in students of cheese making, and who has shared his knowledge with women’s cooperatives in Africa and India, and more locally among the Bedouins, giving them tools and skills to bolster their own microeconomies. Perhaps most importantly, Shai is an artist: “When you are making cheese, you are painting,” he says. “You are painting with milk and with bacteria.”

And indeed, his cheeses are masterpieces. 

Har Eitan Farm > 

These stills are from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.