The first time Toni Eskanazi visited Costa Rica, she came with a girlfriend who was celebrating her 30th birthday. She had heard that there was an Israeli named Izu living in Jacó in a house on the beach who ran a small hotel and taught surfing. She was hoping he would teach her to surf.
Instead, he invited her and her girlfriend for Friday night dinner.
“Who helps you cook?” Toni, whose parents both worked in restaurants, asked.
“Nobody,” he answered. “The guests are on vacation, and even if they say they’ll help, they don’t show up. So I’ve gotten used to doing it myself.”
“OK,” Toni answered. “You do the shopping – whatever you would usually buy – and then go surfing. I’ll cook.”
About two hours before Shabbat, Izu came back and walked into his kitchen. It was so clean that he was sure Toni hadn’t kept her promise to cook. He knocked on her door.
“What did you do?” he asked her. “We have 30 people coming for Shabbat dinner and you didn’t cook anything.”
She then opened the fridge and the oven and showed him she had made a full pescatarian dinner. He apologized, and the guests loved the food.
Sunday, she cooked for him again – chicken breast with vegetables as she saw he was only eating fried schnitzel. After that meal, he proposed and suggested they open a kosher restaurant at his hotel.
“I told him he was crazy,” Toni said, laughing. “But then I came back to Costa Rica and we became a couple. And 13 years later, here we are.”
A kosher time in Costa Rica
They have two children, and a kosher restaurant named Sabress, which is part of the Jewish center in Jacó Beach, about a two-hour drive from the capital of San José. I had the opportunity to spend a night at Izu’s Place, the homey hotel just a few minutes from the beach. We had lunch at Sabress, and Toni, who is tall, dark-haired, and very Moroccan, looked at my freckled, very Ashkenazi-looking children and said, “You don’t look like you know what good food is.”
My kids do know good food, and one of my sons even owns a falafel food truck in Hawaii where he makes everything (including the hummus and the schug) from scratch.
The food at Sabress is fresh and very good. We shared a large meat platter for four that included schnitzel, dark meat chicken, kebab, and falafel along with a large serving of fresh chips, hummus, and Israeli salad. The meat comes from both San José and Panama, which is about a four-hour drive south.
A word about kashrut – Sabress originally had supervision from Chabad, but Toni says she decided to end that relationship for several reasons that she did not want to go into. The restaurant is currently in the process of renewing its certification, but has a letter from Rabbi David Russek of the Jewish Community of San José that he stands behind the kashrut and that anyone who has questions can contact him personally.
Both the hotel and the restaurant have that friendly, informal Israeli vibe. Izu runs a surf school out of the hotel, a great option for anyone who wants to learn how to surf in Hebrew.
During our lunch at Sabress, a family with three young boys sat next to us. What I found interesting was that the parents were speaking to the kids in Hebrew, who answered in English. I guessed that they were an Israeli family who had spent several years in the US, and I was right! Not only that, but they are also on their way back to Israel and will be our neighbors in southern Jerusalem. Small world.
The facilities at the hotel are very comfortable and reasonably priced. The rooms are large, with comfortable beds, and the small pool at the hotel is refreshing. The beach is a few minutes away by foot, and Jacó is known as a serious surfing town.
Izu and Toni invited my family to join them for a Sunday bonfire on a beach about 15 minutes away from Jacó. They own a piece of land there where they hope to build a holistic Jewish center. Most of their guests were Israeli, and we enjoyed beer and tropical fruit as we watched a stunning sunset. It was one of the highlights of our time in Costa Rica despite the ravenous mosquitoes, which came out to feast on us as the sun set.
On Shabbat, Izu’s Place has Shabbat services as well as reasonably priced Shabbat meals. They also offer catering services and can deliver meals anywhere in Costa Rica. The hotel and restaurant are a great option for tourists, whether they are Shabbat-observant or not.
- Izu’s Place
- https://izusplace.com/
The writer was a guest of the hotel.