Hummus in Acre

No visit is complete in Acre without a meal of the fresh Hummus in one of the restaurants in the old city.

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Background:

Hummus is made from crushing chickpeas and serving the paste on a dish, and eating it with Pita bread. No visit is complete in Acre, or the Holy Land, without eating in one of the Hummus eateries in Acre.

What does it have to do with BibleWalks? Well, it was probably one of the dishes that the biblical people ate…

Location:

In the old city of Acre, there are several restaurants that prepare the Hummus fresh and on the spot. The best places that specialize in Hummus are:

Hummus Abu-Suhiel – a small eatery in the white market, near the parking lot on the north entrance to the market. Most of the photos in this web page are from this restaurant.
Hummus Said – a restaurant in the middle of the market. The place also markets the paste they make to other restaurants in Haifa Bay area.

Alternatively, the old cities of Nazareth or Jerusalem are also good places to eat the fresh, heavenly Hummus.

Photos:

(a) Abu Suhiel Hummus-house:

The Abu Suhiel in the “White” Market Hummus-house, located in the white market, won the Television Network #1 prize in 2005. It has but a few tables where you are served with fresh made Hummus, olive oil, and Pita breads. Most of the plates served here include the Hummus plate only, but you can add to it a side plate of French fries.

In the photo below you can see the only 5 tables in the restaurant in a small room that is part of the “white” market complex. This market was built in the 18th century by Daher El-Omar, as a market that traded cotton (hence the name “white”), which was later exported to Europe and made the city prosperous. It was burnt and rebuilt by Suleiman Pasha in 1818.

Click on the photo to view it in higher resolution…

Suheila, the cook and one of the owners, prepares the Hummus in the entrance to the restaurant. She has over 20 years experience in this art of preparing the best tasting plate.

She makes the Hummus from chickpeas that were soaked in water, with additional ingredients such as garlic, salt, parsley, and more.

This is how it looks before being crushed in the blender and turned into a paste.

The resulting smooth paste is served in small dishes, with a pool of olive oil in the middle. Then, you wipe it clean with the several Pita breads, which are freshly baked in the nearby Pita Bakery.

(b) Kaf-Hazahav restaurant:

A typical meal looks like the following serving in the photo below, served in a nearby restaurant. The humus paste in the lower plate includes a dozen heated chickpeas, optional brown cooked broad beans, parsley, and olive oil. The upper-left bottle is malt “beer”, a non-alcoholic drink that can be found only in Israel. The two upper plates are home-made pickled vegetables, Arabic style. An important plate is on the right – the fresh pita bread, prepared in a bakery adjacent to the restaurant.

Bottom line: Highly recommended meal! Totally vegetarian, excellent taste, a low cost treat.

Biblical:

The Hummus may have been referred in the Book of Ruth as “vinegar” (Khometz in the Hebrew source) and the Pita bread as “Morsel” (Pita in the Hebrew source). This story is dated to 1100 BC, and Ruth is the great-grandmother of King David.

“And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left”.