RUTHFULLY YOURS

But Adnan Daher, Maadali’s chef and owner, shrugs off the limitations of space and scope. A trip to Maadali is a trip to a mouthwatering one-man show, and Mr. Daher, who also serves as waiter, manager and short-order cook, turns out his own spins on hraime (spicy fish cooked in a simmering pickled mango sauce); fresh calamari with hyssop and tangy homemade yogurt; and roasted eggplant with smoky tahini and harissa.

Producing such big flavors in such a tiny space seems unlikely, but he does it. And in Acre (or Akko in Hebrew and pronounced Ah-koh), a 5,000-year-old port city that serves as the capital of Israel’s fertile Western Galilee, he is just one culinary magician among many.

Some of the best seafood in the Holy Land hides inside this creaking ancient town, where frothy, fish-packed waves beat against original Crusader-built sea walls and a Technicolor market teems with produce and spices. There’s Uri Buri, the now world-famous seafood restaurant beloved by Phil Rosenthal from the Netflix food series “Somebody Feed Phil”; there’s El Marsa, where homegrown chef Alaa Musa combines his Palestinian recipes with techniques he picked up in Sweden’s Michelin-starred kitchens; and there are endless hummus stands, fresh grills and salad bars. All anonymous and humble, they serve enough hyperlocal, slow food to wake up even the most jaded foodies.

But Acre, with its mixed population of Muslims, Jews and Christians, rarely appears on tourist itineraries for the Israel-bound. Despite its riches of both cuisine and culture, it’s a blue-collar city that’s shabby around the edges and largely ignored in favor of bigger draws like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the Red Sea resort city of Eilat. Uri Jeremias, the white-bearded bon vivant who runs Uri Buri, finds this scandalous. “Acre is like a diamond that has one face polished, and you can see that it has a lot of light in it but nobody bothered to polish the other faces,” he said.

The city’s blend of cultures, and its long history as an impoverished trading hub relying on the sea, have produced varied culinary traditions. Jewish residents cook dishes their grandparents brought from Kurdistan, Iraq and Yemen. Those preparing traditional Palestinian recipes, meanwhile, employ the Acre twist—subbing in cheaper and more readily available seafood on meat-heavy plates. A dish like maqluba (meat, rice and vegetables fried in a pot and then flipped upside-down before serving) will feature octopus or calamari instead of beef or chicken.

To make it in Acre, chefs agree, you don’t need a fancy culinary degree or a buzzy menu. You just need to serve the kind of food that speaks to the local appetite. “The only criticism I ever get [at Maadali] is whether the food tastes good or not,” said Mr. Daher. “No one can criticize my authenticity because I was born to this. I’ve always lived with it. Cooking is in me, and I consider it like breathing.”

Maadali has earned a small but loyal following. So too have the dueling hummus shops of Hummus Said and Hummus Issa, where patrons queue early and often to dip hot pita bread into steaming bowls of creamy masabacha (a hummus variant in which most of the chickpeas remain whole) and hummus ful (covered with fava beans). On the upscale end, don’t expect white tablecloths: Acre just isn’t that kind of city. At El Marsa and Doniana, both of which offer panoramic views of the ancient port and heaping plates of mussels, clams and hand-rolled pasta, the dress code is jeans and T-shirts and families gather for boisterous meals with babies in tow.

At Uri Buri, Mr. Jeremias still personally greets the guests who gather every evening to feast on the omakase-style menu of amberjack ceviche, salmon sashimi with wasabi sorbet and raw shrimp served on a “bruschetta” of persimmon with caviar topping.

His food is elevated, but served without fanfare, on bare tables in a restaurant with crumbling walls. To Mr. Jeremias, anything else would be a disservice to both the food and the city’s lack of pretension.

“We don’t have Gucci Shmucci or any of those fashion shops [in Acre]. In fact, you won’t find one fashionable shop in the whole Old City market, because it’s just meant for all the locals who still come here to buy,” he said. “It’s all local food, with none of the plastic fantastic of the major global chains. And this is what makes Acre special.”

In 2013, Mr. Jeremias doubled down on Acre and poured his life savings into transforming two crumbling 19th-century villas into the now spectacular Efendi Hotel, a 12-room boutique property with a 400-year-old Turkish hammam and wine tastings housed in a 12th-century Crusader cellar. At breakfast, he joins his guests to dine family-style around a massive wooden table off the lobby; in the afternoons, he’s over at Endomela, his ice-cream parlor where he scoops up flavors including halvah (sesame paste), arak (Acre’s favorite anise-flavored liquor) and apricot sorbet, all made from scratch.

“What I love most about Acre and the rest of the Western Galilee is how the products are all real and local, and how obvious it is to everyone here that they’d be part of the kitchen,” said Michal Shiloah, the CEO of Western Galiliee Now, a small tourist association working to convince the 3.6 million people who visit Israel every year to include Acre and its surrounding villages on their itineraries.

She points to the olive oil that sits in every kitchen here, pressed and purchased locally and stored in recycled soda bottles, as an example. “Everyone uses the most exquisite extra-virgin olive oil, but it’s not labeled,” said Ms. Shiloah. “All the fish is seasonal and so fresh—what you in America call farm-to-table, for us is just a way of life here.”