Recently, a carnivorous friend came to stay with me in my apartment over the weekend. Although I occasionally eat meat, in truth meat hardly ever enters my home.
Cooking meat meals for the two of us had no appeal; the solution was to eat our Shabbat meals in a hotel. Of the more than a dozen hotels within walking distance, we chose the closest – the Prima Kings Hotel, on the corner of King George and Ramban.
The charge for four prepaid Shabbat meals was NIS 650 – much less than I had anticipated. . It was even more difficult to believe afterwards when calculating the cost of what we ate.
The restaurant is buffet style, but discovering what there is to eat is somewhat of an adventure. This is because unlike most other hotels in which the buffet is of straight lines forming a square, the Prima Kings buffet is built in an angular fashion, with total surprises – with a mix of Ashkenazi and North African cuisine.
On Friday night, there were approximately 15 kinds of salads, as well as a bar with “do your own” options and a variety of optional dressings. There were three kinds of fish. The gefilte fish was sweet; the fish balls in a spicy sauce were not.
There were two kinds of soup. I chose what was labeled “orange soup,” seemingly carrot soup, which was just okay. My friend chose the chicken soup, which was so good that she went back for a second helping.
The choice of meats included soft, succulent beef; shwarma-style shredded beef; meatballs; and chicken prepared in several ways; and hot side dishes.
For dessert, there were numerous kinds of cakes and pies, plus lots of fresh fruit, including fruit salad, with hot tea or coffee to wash it all down.
Half bottles of wine had been placed on every table for “Kiddush” before the meal, and there was an alcove in the wall filled with an assortment of challah rolls. We chose the sweet ones, and they were delicious.
Next to us was a very long family table, filled with three generations celebrating a bar mitzvah. I asked the boy’s father if we could listen to his “Kiddush.” He not only obliged but brought his Kiddush cup to our table so my friend and I could drink from it.
For Saturday lunch, we expected the same fare as Friday night. To some extent it was, but fish choices also included a whole salmon, which was stripped to the bone very quickly. There was no soup. But there was excellent chopped liver and a lightly spiced egg salad.
I had put hummus on my plate before noticing the chopped liver, and I subsequently discovered that chopped liver dipped in hummus is very tasty. The meat choices were more extensive, including stuffed Jerusalem artichokes.
Cholent was, of course, among the offerings, but I was disappointed not to find kishke. It was only after I was halfway through the various items on my plate that my friend noticed that someone at the next table was eating kishke. I asked where he found it, and he pointed me to one of the small angular bars that had had only two items on it – one of which was a dish of kishke in a different kind of cholent. The other was yet another kind of cholent that resembled baked beans in tomato sauce but was devoid of kishke.
The desserts were more varied than on Friday night. The cream puffs tasted as if the cream were dairy and not parve, whereas the layered cream cake from the previous evening had been so obviously parve that I couldn’t eat it.
The hotel has two very large dining rooms, separated by the buffet. On Friday night, only one was full; the other was empty.
On Saturday, a group filled the second dining room, and the first was only half full because diners had been to one of the many area synagogues, with services at different times. Some synagogues – especially Chabad – had an extensive kiddush, so worshipers from Chabad arrived at the hotel at around 2 p.m. or later. As a result, the atmosphere on Saturday was not as lively or as interesting socially.
More than 90% of the diners on Friday night were religiously observant and sang Shabbat songs at the table. Quite a variety of hassidic and non-hassidic melodies floated through the room, and some guests who did not know one another previously began talking to neighbors at the next table. The Shabbat atmosphere was everything it should be, with a lot of joyful singing and even a little dancing.
In addition, wait service was polite and professional, with dirty dishes quickly cleared from tables, but not before staff checked whether diners had finished eating from them. That’s rare in Israel. At one of the tables, someone had soiled the tablecloth, and in practically no time a member of staff was present with a fresh tablecloth.
On Saturday, all the tables had been reset with different tablecloths and napkins – white on Friday night, a delicate yellowish shade of ivory on Saturday.
All in all, the money for the meals had been more than well spent.
Better still, my friend, who is not religiously observant, enjoyed herself immensely in the Shabbat environment – and ate meat to her heart’s content.
■ SOON THERE will be a new hotel even closer to my home, though I can’t tell whether it will cater to people not staying at the hotel or serve Shabbat meals. There are hotels in Jerusalem that have a coffee shop but not a dining room. In addition, the Intercontinental luxury hotel opposite the Jewish Agency building is almost completed. How these two new hotels will affect existing hotels is anyone’s guess. There are at least four other new hotels under construction on Ben-Yehuda Street and Jaffa Road. With tourism at a low ebb and unlikely to make a speedy recovery, the only conclusion to be drawn is that hotel investors in Israel must be among the world’s greatest optimists.
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