We were taken by the cousin to Restaurant Ruttenberg, an incongruously situated gourmet joint right up on the Jordanian border in the middle of nowhere up by Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Near Kibbutz Gesher, it’s housed in a shack that was used to quarantine animals brought into British Mandate Palestine before the 1948 war. What it’s doing here is a complete mystery. A relatively quick swing back to the coast for people travelling up north, perhaps this kind of peculiar place works in Israel because the country is so small. You move around it quick, like a charge through a circuit. A no longer hot militarized zone, this particular spot is quiet, bleak, and beautiful. The food was fantastic.
