I met a good friend for lunch in Jerusalem on a street with more kosher restaurants than probably any place in the world... Yes, on Emek Refaim Street. What we did would be impossible almost any place else, except the old downtown Jerusalem triangle.
We started off by entering one of the legendary dairy places, being seated, getting a menu, reading it and saying in unison:
"Very expensive and nothing worthwhile."
So we left and tried another one with the identical result. After that we generally just asked for the menu, read it and left. We even went to a very popular place on one of the side streets where the food was more creative and the prices even higher.
Finally we entered the same chain where we found an interesting coffee a couple of months earlier, cafe`cafe`.
It had been worth the search. They offer a choice of "business lunches" starting at ns39, almost ns20 less than most of the main courses we had seen in other places. This special deal included a first course, soup, salad, stuffed grape leaves or fancy bread plus the main course and either a simple juice or seltzer (soda water.)
Since I had ordered a salad as main course, I needed something else to choose. The soup was either barley, too many carbohydrates for me, or onion, which is usually much too salty, so I took their stuffed grape leaves even though they are stuffed with rice. They were served creatively with olive oil and yogurt, just perfect.
My friend had the barley soup, which she enjoyed. And we both ordered the Mediterranean Salad, which was surprisingly good, even though it had that horrible cheese on top. The eggplant really added to it, and it was filling.
Yes, it does pay to shop around for restaurants, as long as you have the luxury of choice.
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