Situated at Tel Aviv’s Marina amongst the moored sail boats and seagulls, this restaurant has a romantic atmosphere at night and a buzzing, trendy feel during the day.

White decking furnished with white wooden tables and chairs both inside and out, you launch on board an experience of fresh fish and seafood, good wine, great, friendly service and slow, funky background jazz.

 

Notable Hospitality, Savory Selections 

 

A chirpy, friendly waitress with excellent English listed the tempting sounding specials as she handed us the menus. A tough choice awaited us as we scaled the delicious sounding menu. For an appetizer we decide to go for the Meze plate (NIS 54) – a nice selection of dips, including tehina, tsatsiki, ikra, lentils and calamari, smoked eggplant, tabuli, and marinated capsicum, served with hot crispy foccacia bread. We then shared a delicious and beautifully presented haloumi salad (NIS 46), which came on a bed of lettuce and salad greens, with grilled zucchini, cherry tomatoes and grilled haloumi strips.

 

The great service continued as the evening went on. The food was served quickly, the wine (a tasty Israeli Sauvignon Blanc that we chose form a wide selection of international wines) was topped off when needed and the chatty waitress made sure that everything was to our liking. The restaurant is exclusive, yet not pretentious and seemed to be a real tourist attraction, as much of the clientele are foreigners, welcomed in by the local dinners and staff.

 

 

Choosing the main course was difficult, with such a great selection to choose from. As a non-meat eater, I was in heaven with all the options, but of course there are still meat options (three in fact) for those that must get their meat dosage for the day. There was a great choice of pastas, fresh fish, seafood and salads – the kind of place one could definitely go back to many times without getting bored of the menu! I chose the seafood cocktail (NIS 99) and well worth it! An amazing cocktail of seafood with an incredible smell was served to me in a tasty soup. The portion was big, not stingy at all on the seafood like many places.  My dining companion cannot go without his meat and particularly can never refuse the offer of a 300 gram entrecote steak (NIS 96), which he tells me was just divine. Served with an entire garlic bud and crispy mini roast potatoes, I must say that for someone that does not eat meat, it did look enticing.

 

Although we were full after so much good food, we could not turn down the waitress’s offer of a sweet dessert. We chose one from a selection of interesting sounding dishes, the hot chocolate soufflé served with vanilla ice cream (NIS 38) which we definitely could have done without but which was delicious all the same. 

 

All in all it was an extremely enjoyable experience. While I would recommend the fresh fish or seafood options, there is definitely something for everyone. Fortuna Del Mar is great for taking friends to from out of town or overseas, a night of romantic dining, the perfect location for a business lunch or casual Friday afternoon drink and nibbles.