Apollo's Temple in Side
Photo: Ron Peled
Kosher resort to open in Antalya
First kosher restaurant in Turkey to open in July at Antalya’s Hotel Silence Park Resort
News for kosher-keeping tourists: A Glatt kosher restaurant – Turkey’s first – is set to open soon in the resort town of Antalya.
The restaurant is set to open in a new hotel called Silence Park Resort, in the Side region, on which construction is currently being completed. The hotel will have 701 rooms and is expected to open in July.
The kosher restaurant will be called the King David, and its kashrut will be under the supervision of Rabbi Moshe Nahshoni, who served in the past as head of the Kashrut Department of the Chief Rabbinate, and currently head the Kashrut Department in Rishon Lezion.
The restaurant will operate two kitchens - dairy and meat – and will serve three meals per day as well as kosher alcoholic beverages, snacks and soft drinks.
According to restaurant manager Aharon Lipner, most of the raw ingredients used to prepare the food, except for the meat, will be imported from Israel. As for the meat, a special team of butchers will arrive especially from Israel to supervise the slaughter.
“The restaurant will suit Ashkenazim as well as Sephardim, and will maintain a high level of kashrut which will also meet the standards of haredim,” Lipner said.
Haredi sector 'important player'
The opening of the kosher restaurant is the initiative of the tourism company Eshet Tours, which markets vacation packages to Turkey. The company noticed that kosher families who wished to vacation in clubs in Turkey were forced to bring food from home, or they made do a minimal amount of food from the hotels.
Efraim Kramer, CEO of Eshet Tours, says that the religious sector is a siginificant “player” in the tourism industry, and “designing special resort packages to suit the needs of this sector will constitute a completing product for public of conservative, institutional and young customers of Eshet Tours as well.
The Israeli Embassy in Turkey praised the initiative and said it would allow many Israelis who keep kosher to vacation in Antalya.
