the random oracle

The food here is great even if it’s not any more affordable than NY, especially with the awful exchange rate. Friday night I went to this cute cafe called “X-Ray” on Bograshov St where I had a Haloumi cheese salad and a plate of gnocchi with marinated mushrooms in a cream sauce. The Haloumi cheese was great, fried to perfection and matched with some leafy greens and cherry tomatoes bursting with tart juice, and the gnocchi was delicious, and the sauce was perfect, not too heavy and not too light.

Saturday I went to this restaurant Manta Ray suggested by TR for a late lunch. The restaurant is right on the beach with beautiful views of the sea and of old Jaffa, where the old lighthouse sits perched above a small promontory overlooking the sea. The food at Manta Ray is tapas style, and even though the choices all looked amazing (most were meat-free too so I theoretically could have ordered almost all of them), I ended up picking the ceviche, roasted eggplant with sour cream, and a chickpea and calamari dish. The ceviche was great, a nice balance of onion, lemon, and fish, the eggplant was soaked in delicious olive oil and topped with a dollop of sour cream, and the calamari and chickpeas formed a light complement to the heavy eggplant dish. The tapas came with this Balkan bread that was kind of like focaccia, straight out of the oven and drizzled with more olive oil.