The Obelisk Restaurant

The Obelisk is the main dining room of the Kempinski Hotel Ishtar — a large, high-ceilinged restaurant built around a live-station buffet that runs breakfast, lunch, and dinner for resort guests and paying non-guests. It is the Dead Sea's most extravagant buffet, and the default answer for a group dinner (eight-plus) that wants breadth over specificity.

The room seats about 220 across multiple sections, with a full wall of windows to the Dead Sea and terrace tables outside in good weather. The live stations run to eight: a pasta station, a Lebanese grill, a sushi bar, an Indian tandoor, a carving station for the nightly roast, a seafood bar, a cheese counter, and a dessert line that is — by some margin — the most photographed on the Dead Sea shore.

The breakfast buffet (6.30–10.30) is the single most-ordered non-dinner meal on the Dead Sea and is bookable for non-guests at 30 JOD. The dinner buffet (7–11) rotates theme nights: Lebanese on Mondays, Seafood on Wednesdays, Asian on Saturdays. The Friday brunch — an all-hotel event running 12.30–4.00 — is the city's most popular weekend sitting.

Service is efficient and family-friendly. The room is child-welcoming in a way the other Kempinski rooms are not, which makes The Obelisk the default choice for multi-generational dining. Wine and soft-drink packages are available as add-ons to the buffet price.

The Obelisk is the Dead Sea's team-dinner answer when the group is large, the preferences mixed, and the brief is 'good food and a sea view without a three-hour commitment'. The terrace tables at sunset are the book. For solo dinners, the seafood bar and the pasta station give a proper evening without needing a reservation.