CE2: A Dubai Rooftop Comes to the Ashdod Sea

The first thing you notice at CE2 is the horizon. The elevator opens onto a rooftop washed in warm white plaster, low woven pendants throwing a soft copper glow, and beyond the low iron railing the Mediterranean stretches flat and slate blue to the edge of sight. A DJ is already at the deck at nine on a Wednesday night, easing into a slow Levantine electronica set, and a waiter passes carrying a whole sea bream on a wooden board, its skin blistered from the fire, a wedge of lemon smoking gently beside it. Somewhere below, the Ashdod marina lights blink into life. This is Ce2 on an early summer evening, and this is the return of Chef Idan Pompi Bushari to a dining room of his own.

Idan Bushari is not a stranger to a busy pass. He came up through Assaf Granit's Machneyuda Group, won the Israeli television competition that anointed him next restaurant of the year, and opened Kilometrage inside the Brown Brut Hotel on Rothschild in Tel Aviv, a project that ran for two years before the hotel closed and dragged the restaurant down with it in late 2024. Ce2 is his comeback, and he has moved south rather than sideways. The choice of Ashdod is not accidental. This is a city that has quietly built one of the best kosher fish scenes in the country over the last decade, from Pescado's flagship on the marina down to the smaller operations along the coast, and Bushari has landed on the highest rooftop in that story.