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One of the gastronomic delights of visiting Israel is eating at one of the restaurants along Tiberias’s waterfront promenade.
Here alongside the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), the specialty is Saint Peter’s fish, so called because it is the very fish that Peter caught in the Sea of Galilee thousands of years ago, until he was called away to be “a fisher of men.” Saint Peter’s fish, freshly caught, is also the featured item at the restaurant of Kibbutz Ein Gev on the opposite shore of the sea. |
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For many years, Saint Peter’s fish, also known as Nile perch or the more inclusive Latin name of tilapia, was only available in Israel and at some gourmet restaurants worldwide. In the late 1950s, however, Tel Aviv University zoologist Prof. Lev Fishelson changed all this. He developed a hybrid of Saint Peter’s fish that was highly tolerant to salt water as well as high temperatures. This made it ideally adaptable to growing in ponds in arid desert areas where the available underground water is usually unuseable because of its high salinity. |
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