Uri Yirmias
‘Uri Buri’
Entrepreneur, Acre.
“I was born in Nahariya, and as a child, I often visited Acre. Thirty-six years ago, I opened my fish restaurant, ‘Uri Buri’, on the promenade in Nahariya. Eight years later, it found its home in Acre’s Old City – a place unlike any other in the world.
I loved this city then, and I still love it today. I am a man of the sea, and I need to feel the sea when I wake up, so choosing to place the restaurant on Acre’s waterfront was a natural decision for me. To this day, every sunset still excites me.
The past year has been especially challenging, but I have learned time and again not to follow the crowd, but rather to trust my intuition and instincts. Many businesses laid off employees over the past year and are now struggling to rehire. In a steakhouse, new staff can be trained within a few months, but in my restaurant and at the “Efendi” Hotel, it is much more complicated. Some of my employees have been with me for decades – they are like family to me.
Since October 7th, both the restaurant and the hotel have remained open, but there were very few guests and tourists and
I missed them greatly. It felt like something was missing. I am grateful that guests and tourists are now returning to the restaurant and to the hotel, allowing us to gradually regain a sense of normalcy. When it comes to tourism, the sky is the limit for Acre and the north. The recent war shattered many assumptions, but I believe that just as Europe was rebuilt after World War II with the help of the ‘Marshall Plan’, our region and the Middle East can also be restored.
My mother always said that one must never lose their sense of humor or their hope, and I define myself as an optimist.
After all, if you spend your entire life as a pessimist and then, on your last day, realize you were wrong – you have essentially wasted your whole life. But if you were an optimist and only realized you were wrong on your last day – you only wasted one day. So, there is no other choice but to be an optimist. I will always choose to embrace hope and light, rather than succumb to despair and darkness – that is my life perspective.
When I opened the “Efendi” Hotel in Acre’s Old City in 2012, many doubted its success, but it turned into a remarkable success.
On May 11, 2021, during the riots in Acre amid Operation “Guardian of the Walls,” the hotel was burned down – but that did not change my worldview. The vast majority of Acre’s Arab residents did not participate in the riots, because, in the end, everyone understands that we must live together on the same piece of land. I hope this understanding will spread throughout the entire Middle East.”