Simple art of seafood
In the ancient city of Akko, an Israeli chef has been experimenting with the sea’s bounty for decades
AKKO, ISRAEL— From an old Turkish mansion overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Uri Jeremias has been experimenting with seafood for nearly three decades.
“I don’t know how to cook,” the burly and bearded Israeli chef says from under the vaulted stone arches of his restaurant.
“In order to think out of the box, you need a box,” he adds with a grin. “I’m doing my own thing.”
The sign outside Uri Buri is modest and faded. The terrace, which sits across a parking lot from an ancient seawall, is dotted with simple wrought iron tables. Inside, the dining room is sparse and airy. There is nothing to distract from the plate — a bare, almost Israeli esthetic that belies the unassuming complexity of Jeremias’s creations, like salmon sashimi gently drizzled with soy sauce and served with a scoop of homemade wasabi sorbet.
“Our restaurant serves simple food, and simple can be the best,” Jeremias boasts. “Jugglers, they start with two balls, and then they make another one, and then they make four and then they can’t make anymore. You know? . . . I can juggle with a maximum of eight ingredients.”
Jeremias’s restaurant sits within the old city of Akko, a tiny coastal town in northern Israel, just 20 kilometres south of the country’s heavily fortified border with Lebanon.
First settled by ancient Canaanite farmers, then continually inhabited for the past 4,000 or so years, Akko is one of the oldest living cities on the planet.
Also known as “Acre” in English or “Akka” in Arabic, today, Akko is centred around an old fortified city of narrow, winding streets — all of which forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site — where Arabs, Jews, Christians and Baha’í mix freely in markets, cafés and along Akko’s waterfront promenade.
“You don’t see soldiers here,” Jeremias tells me. He’s right — elsewhere in Israel, armed Israeli teenagers in olive drab are an ubiquitous sight. “There’s no tension here because we respect each other.”
Akko, which transformed into a city some four millennia ago under the seafaring Phoenicians, took much of its present shape in the 12th and 13th centuries during the Crusades, in the 18th to 19th centuries under Ottoman rule, and after 1948, when it became part of the then-fledgling state of Israel.
You could spend days exploring the walled city’s bustling alleys and bazaars, meandering through stone arches, past houses, hookah parlours, workshops and stalls where vendors hawk everything from spices to souvenirs to pitas stuffed with falafel and heaps of pickled lemon. There’s also the elegant Al-Jazzar Mosque, the second-largest mosque in Israel; Hamam al-Basha, a 19th-century Turkish bath-turned-museum; and the imposing Hospitaller Fortress, which served as the seat of the Crusader Kingdom’s capital for a century and whose labyrinthine bowels can be explored both above and below Akko’s present-day streets.
Just outside the old city is the expansive and elegant Baha’í Gardens, which ring the holiest site in the Baha’í faith: the mansion where Baha’u’llah, the monotheistic religion’s Persian founder, spent his final years after being imprisoned by the Ottomans in Akko’s Crusader-era fortress. Now a major pilgrimage site, Baha’u’llah’s remains were laid to rest here after his death in 1892.
Akko is a living museum. Even the elegant Efendi Boutique Hotel where I stay is composed of a pair of painstakingly restored Ottoman-era palaces. Jeremias, who owns the hotel, brought Italian painters in to retouch and recreate their elegant frescoes. A Crusader-era cellar is also now a wine bar, while just behind the lobby, a 400-year-old Turkish bath can still be used to unwind. I’m already awake to watch the sunrise and hear the muezzin’s call from a mosque’s slender minaret hovering just outside my window, the old city and the Mediterranean spread out below.
Opening a restaurant here was a labour of love for Jeremias, a lifelong hobby diver and fisherman who had always relished the pleasure of experimenting with the sea’s bounty to feed his family and friends. As for the restaurant’s name, it comes from the fisherman’s childhood nickname.
“‘Buri’ is a grey mullet,” Jeremias explains. “When I opened a restaurant, it was just natural to call it ‘Uri Buri.’ ”
Uri Buri has an evolving menu that’s based on what’s available (catches are sourced from as close as Akko’s shores to as far away as Parisian markets) and dishes that Jeremias feels he has perfected.
“I don’t read cookbooks,” Jeremias says. “I cook only things that I like to eat.”
And while there is a lengthy à la carte menu, Jeremias would rather you come in with an empty stomach and an open mind and opt for the culinary symphony of this tasting menu.
“I prefer to serve small dishes, to make a variety of tastes and not just one thing and that’s it,” he says. “I’m deciding what you will eat, because it’s very important when you serve that.”
On my visit, Jeremias dishes up bruschetta topped with smoked egg- plant and raw Spanish mackerel; amberjack ceviche; raw tuna served with daikon-like kohlrabi; salmon wrapped in seaweed and panko; tiny red shrimps with fish roe and sweet cheese atop slices of persimmon; octopus with zucchini; salmon sashimi with wasabi sorbet (“I was looking for a way to make the wasabi friendlier to humankind,” Jeremias ex- plains); and seafood and mushroom soups served in espresso cups (“So as not to fill you up,” he says).
Next comes Spanish mackerel that has been soaked in seawater (“So it tastes like it was taken out of the sea when you bite it,” Jeremias says); grilled shrimp served atop artichokes and black rice noodles seasoned with citrus and vinegar; ouzo and marzipan sorbets to cleanse the palate; then heavier dishes as a finale: seared tuna with yogurt and chili peppers (“A classic Israeli dish that you won’t find in Israel,” Jeremias says) and scallops in a cream sauce of white wine, garlic and ginger, then garnished with seaweed. For desert, Jeremias serves kanafeh — a traditional Middle Eastern pastry made of light cheese and a shredded wheat, then drizzled with sugar syrup and served in a skillet — alongside homemade rose and cardamom ice cream.
“I want to tell you something — it’s a secret,” Jeremias says towards the end of my meal. “There is no bad fish! There are only bad cooks. All fish, every fish, has some weak points. If you catch the big weak point, you can make yourself a delicacy. And if you don’t — if you can’t — don’t blame the fish.” Daniel Otis was hosted by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, which did not review or approve this story.