Leonardo Nourafchan wanted to do something different. After trying to work in real estate, the Californian knew he wanted to break into the food industry, starting with catering from his own home – with the help of social media outreach.
To do this, he went on to experiment in the kitchen at several restaurants in New York, including Mike’s Bistro and Alenbi, to finally open the Israeli house Charcoal Grill & Bar, in Los Angeles.
Nourafchan has introduced Mexican-influenced dishes – inspired by the region’s culinary scene – into its kosher menu. Among them, lamb shawarma tacos, which he said are now incredibly popular on the menu. The restaurant closed at the start of the pandemic, but in May 2020, Nourafchan was testing a new food concept, kosher mexicali, in the kitchen of his former meat supplier.
Lenny’s Casita, a kosher Mexican restaurant, was then officially opened in July 2021.
“It’s sort of a cross between kosher Chipotle and Taco Bell, which are the things I used to eat the most as a kid,” he told CNN.
Nourafchan said his menu is inspired by street food — which includes pico de gallo roast beef tacos, chipotle honey wings and Mediterranean pita breads called arayis — and is part of a major “kosher food revolution” taking place in All country.
In cities like New York, Chicago, Miami and Baltimore, restaurants are redefining kosher and Jewish food more than ever, using traditionally non-kosher cuisines such as Chinese, Japanese, French and Italian.
These kosher restaurants are attracting more than just Orthodox Jews – The kosher restaurant owners that CNN spoke with noted that a large portion of their clientele are young non-Jews looking to try innovative dishes.
“Before you had gefilte and cholent and their kosher delicatessen, now you have access to a wide variety of dishes,” said Nourafchan, who adds that many non-kosher chefs are adding a multicultural flair to the cuisine.
“People are willing to value and appreciate new traditional and authentic food in a way that I don’t think kosher Jews were interested in in the past,” he said. “It all combines to support a market that allows creative people like me to make their own creations.”
What Defines Kosher Food
Kosher food has become significantly more accessible over the past decade, according to Elan Kornblum, president of “Great Kosher Reataurants Magazine,” which runs a Facebook group about kosher restaurants. He attributes this to social media, which presents kosher cooking as healthier, as well as the growing creativity of chefs and increasing accessibility to kosher ingredients.
Today, there are more than a million ingredients and products certified as kosher, according to Roger Horowitz, author of “Kosher USA.” In supermarkets, 30% to 40% of items are certified kosher, Horowitz said. Many orthodox rabbinical organizations incorporated kosher requirements into food manufacturing, integrating modern science with centuries-old Jewish law.
Kosher laws state that dairy products cannot be consumed for the first six hours after meat. Land animals must ruminate and have split hooves, according to the Torah, which prohibits pork and rabbit meat. Fish must have fins and scales, including tuna, salmon and sea bass.
Horowitz told CNN that as many Jews arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, the integration of kosher dietary norms became a measure of their acceptance in American society, where Jewish dietary codes were in conflict with culinary traditions. predominantly Christian.
Incorporating kosher requirements into food manufacturing and supply chains has made it possible for many ingredients to be certified as kosher, especially those not traditionally associated with Jewish food.
According to Horowitz, certification of kosher meat was particularly challenging. Although meats such as pork are out of the question, there are many requirements for how poultry should be slaughtered, which differ from the processing procedures followed by mass production.
Meat is an “even bigger problem” because Jewish law prohibits the consumption of blood after the animal has been killed, so only the forequarters are allowed. The small number of kosher meat manufacturing centers contributes to much higher prices for kosher meat than regular meat.
“Overall, certified kosher spaghetti sauce, for example, has no price difference compared to non-kosher spaghetti sauce,” Horowitz said. “Instead, in the meat business, you’re paying a fine, a surcharge for Jewish religious requirements.”
Some kosher products, such as Manischewitz wine, were instrumental in winning over non-Jewish consumers. Others, like Jell-O, have gone on long journeys to become kosher.
Horowitz noted that glycerin, an ingredient found in everything from soft drinks to ice cream, was originally considered non-kosher because it was a by-product of soap making and a product of animal fat. Due to scientific developments, the glycerin in vegetable oil or petroleum is kosher, and Coca-Cola and other products could be certified.
Kosher food options have expanded with relatively marginal cost increases due to advances in manufacturing that have made it easier to detect whether ingredients are free of contaminants. The scope of what is considered “Jewish food” has grown beyond the Ashkenazi cuisine of Eastern Europe to “reflect the diversity and variety of Jews who are likely to eat French or Italian food on a daily basis,” Horowitz said.
Difficulties in operating a kosher restaurant
Many innovative and culturally diverse kosher restaurants have opened this year in the US. While these restaurants display many dishes or cooking styles that were previously unknown to customers, experimenting with them carries some risks and costs, according to some owners.
Bryan Gryka is the principal owner and executive chef of Milt’s BBQ for the Perplexed in Chicago, with many dishes inspired by his childhood and adolescence in Arkansas. The menu includes options like smoked breast sandwich for 16 hours, spicy chicken “Noshville” and wood-smoked chicken. Because of the high costs of kosher meat, which soared during the pandemic, menu prices have also risen.
Gryka turned to social media to explain exactly how prices split to make the numbers more transparent. He also posted on why restaurants use, for example, frozen French fries, or why they charge for cancellation.
For restaurants certified as kosher, frequently closed on Friday and Saturday nights for Shabbat – as well as all Jewish holidays – can result in large revenue losses. According to Gryka, Milt’s closes about 100 days a year, making it harder to compete with others that stay open year-round.
“We do a lot of catering and event services and, in terms of economics, that’s a big part of our success, it’s the ability to do other things outside the four walls, because in a lot of places if you don’t have the catering, the manners of surviving and being profitable is somehow limited,” said Gryka.
Soho Asian Bar and Grill, a contemporary Chinese and Japanese-inspired restaurant in Aventura, Florida, misses about 80 days a year. But according to owner Shlomi Ezra, having such a large “one-stop shop” menu – with sushi, dim sum, noodle dishes and steaks – allows Soho to cater to a large kosher audience unfamiliar with flavors Asians.
Soho’s commitment to serving everyone in the community, including those affected by the Surfside condominium collapse last summer, has also helped because it attracts a large non-kosher audience.
“I don’t see any difference between a normal restaurant and a kosher restaurant,” Ezra told CNN. “The restaurant has to be good, the service has to be good, the food has to be punctual so that people don’t forget about you”.
What are restaurants doing to “kosherify” different cuisines
Josh Kessler worked primarily in non-kosher restaurants in New York City after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America. But he decided to take advantage of his experiences in French cuisine to open a kosher bistro that “could compare to any of the other non-kosher restaurants I’ve worked with in my career.”
At Barnea Bistro, Kessler prepares dishes like beef tartar, Hamachi crudo, lamb riblets and duck breast with wild mushroom risotto, as well as Italian-inspired dishes like black truffle ravioli and rib gnocchi.
Kessler uses cashews as a milk replacer and uses vegan cooking techniques for dishes like fried polenta with truffled honey. He uses French techniques in his menu because he’s noticed that more kosher Jews are willing to step out of their comfort zones and try new flavors.
“Whether on video, or in photos, on the Food Network or on the Cooking Channel, [judeus kosher] are exposed … to what the rest of the world is eating, and it turns out that kosher people want an opportunity to be progressive that way and get at least the best possible exposure to the different types of cuisines in the world,” said Kessler.
That was one of the goals of Nir Weinblut, of Turkish and Italian descent, who owns the kosher Italian restaurant La Gondola in Beverly Hills. As one of Los Angeles’ first kosher Italian restaurants – opened in 1992 – over the years, La Gondola has taken advantage of Asian, Mediterranean and California cuisine, creating dishes such as candied beef bacon, penne al arrabiata, jambalaya pasta and salmon pastramized.
“Our goal was to take out all the cheese and we didn’t want to make any substitutes, because there was no way in the world, especially at that time, to be able to make a fettuccine alfredo. [com parmesão e manteiga] fake if you have such bad substitute products,” Weinblut said.
In studying his heritage, Weinblut found that Italian cuisine doesn’t use as much cheese as most people think – “when you think of Italian, you think everything has two kilos of mozzarella thrown into the food.” Instead, he relied more on vegetables and fruits while creating the dishes.
This still required creative solutions. For example, as kosher supervision doesn’t allow chefs to use whole artichokes due to the number of insects in the heart of the plant, La Gondola improvised, using only the artichoke bottoms.
Weinblut told CNN that because he chose not to present La Gondola as primarily kosher, the clientele has been about 80% non-kosher. He sees La Gondola as one of the leaders in the “kosher revolution” in Los Angeles.
At Serengeti restaurant in Baltimore, a kosher steakhouse that blends flavors like Southern and African, showcasing the possibilities of kosher cuisine couldn’t be more important, according to co-owner Lara Franks. Born and raised in South Africa, Lara and her husband Larry wanted to capture the complexities of South African cuisine in a restaurant with a kosher context.
They brought Dutch, Malay, Portuguese and Indigenous recipes for dishes such as Cabo Malay vegetable samosas, Mozambican-inspired chicken Peri Peri, Cape Town chicken breast and biryani rice, and South African bobotie.
“There’s no need, if you’re staying kosher, to feel that you’re at a disadvantage in some way because you can’t try a particular dish or types of cuisine,” says Frank.
“Almost anything can have a kosher translation.”
Reference: CNN Brasil
