Why There's Never Been A Better Time To Eat Jewish Food

Original story: Thrillist

First came the hipster delis. Then babka went viral. Now, Broad City is filming scenes at Russ & Daughters Cafe and people are making burgers with latkes for buns. There’s no doubt about it, Jewish food is everywhere, and it’s undeniably cool.

But only 10 short years ago, things were not looking great for the centuries-old cuisine. Food media was screaming about the rapid disappearance and decline of the Jewish deli, which seemed to indicate a declining interest around Jewish food in general from the millennial generation. Delis of course, are central to the Jewish-American identity and were also previously some of the only places (save for bagel shops & bakeries) where someone could enjoy the cuisine outside of the home. Soon the next generation of Jewish-Americans realized that as their older relatives started to pass on, traditions, recipes, and culture would die along with them, unless they did something about it. They also realized that they had to help make it relevant to attract a younger, restaurant-going audience.

“New wave” delis started popping up in notoriously influential food cities as early as 2007 (the same year as David Sax’s Save the Deli blog launched) with Portland’s Kenny & Zuke’s, followed shortly thereafter by the likes of Wise Sons in San Francisco and Brooklyn’s Mile End Deli in 2010. These restaurants focused on old-school techniques but using high-quality ingredients. They played around with fusion too (ie, Mile End’s Chicken Schnitzel BLT et al).

Younger generations of Jewish-Americans like Noah Bernamoff, co-founder of Mile End Deli, felt a call to action. “My grandmother had just passed away," Bermanoff recalls of the summer of 2010. "The way I comforted myself and addressed that was to start digging into her recipes. I soon realized, this is what we should be doing -- we should be serving Montreal deli food, and it needs to be defined as being Jewish.” Like Bermanoff, many others have opened new wave Jewish food businesses in the past couple of years.

So what exactly makes a food “Jewish?” In the past that was a much more literal thing, having to do with a food’s Kosher designation for religious Jews who followed Kashrut dietary laws. Jews that immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe during the early part of the 20th century brought the foods they grew up eating in those regions to hub cities like New York and Chicago. Many were simply classic takes on Eastern European dishes like dumplings, smoked fish, and soups that were Kosher-friendly. Ashkenazi Jewish traditions stuck and became what we consider Jewish food in America, many strictly Kosher, and later, many not so much.

The book and digital feature, The 100 Most Jewish Foods, which was released in March of this year by Tablet Magazine attempts to answer the same question, ie “what makes a food Jewish?” with a list of 100 items.  “While they may not be the best or tastiest Jewish foods, they are very, very Jewish,” says editor Alana Newhouse. There’s no scientific algorithm at the heart of it that clearly leads to all of these entries. The challenge for us in asking what foods have the greatest Jewish significance  -- meaning they’ve played a role in the Jewish experience throughout history or in contemporary times in a way that feels elevated and vital.” In the book you’ll find essays on everything from Entenmann’s donuts to gefilte fish.

Since Jewish people have been diasporic for most of their history, this means food influences are global. Thanks in part to influential chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi, Mike Solomonov (Philly’s Zahav) and NYC’s Einat Admony (Taim, Balaboosta) who have fostered so much interest in Sephardic Jewish food traditions, Israeli food (which is incredibly challenging to define) is now often considered by some to be under that umbrella of Jewishness despite the fact that if you "ask any chef in Israel and most will tell you that they don’t consider their food Jewish,” according to food writer Gabriella Gershenson.

Bermanoff and his partner Matt Kliegman later opened Black Seed Bagel, which now has five locations (including one in Brooklyn), a James Beard nomination for its head chef/baker Dianna Daoheung and inspired a whole new set of would-be bagelmakers in NYC and beyond including Baz and the sit-down concept Sadelle’s, from Major Food Group which specializes in artisanal bagels and featured cured and smoked fish from a top-notch purveyor.

Around the country, trendy spots like Washington, DC’s Call Your Mother markets to millennials with neon purple graffiti and sandwiches with names like the Rihanna-Flex and The Efron. Half Sour in Chicago plays with fusion in dishes like pastrami chili and smoked salmon dip. Daughter’s Deli in West Hollywood is the 2.0 version of Trisha Langer’s namesake family restaurant.

Over the past couple of years, things have gone a few steps further — far beyond just bagels and deli fare. Freedman’s, which opened in 2017 in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood, serves kasha-laced tartare, pastrami plates, and sweetbread schnitzel inside what feels like a hipster bubby’s house (think retro light fixtures and vintage print wallpaper). “For me and so many others, it was food that felt like home and like comfort,” says co-owner Jonah Freedman on why he was drawn to Jewish food as the focus of Freedman’s. “It was food wrapped in memory, nostalgia, and family. ...We wanted to look at the roots and history of Jewish American and Ashkenazi cooking and try to reinvigorate and reinterpret it.” The restaurant secured a James Beard nomination shortly after opening in fall 2017 for its former chef, Liz Johnson, and graced Bon Appétit’s 10 Hot issue cover in 2018, widely considered one of the hottest restaurant openings of the year.

In San Francisco, chef David Nayfeld, opened the critically acclaimed Che Fico in 2018 as well, which was heavily inspired by the Cucina Ebraica, the Jewish cuisine of Rome. While waiting to immigrate to the US, Nayfeld’s parents, originally from Belarus, spent six months in Rome, and were finally able to purchase food items they desired, without having to ration. “The flavors spoke to me in a familiar way,” Nayfeld tells us. “They were a marriage of so many childhood memories and my newfound passion for everything Italian.“ Dishes like grilled chopped duck liver and supplì fried rice balls are examples of Nayfeld’s interpretation of Cucina Ebraica, alongside plates of more classically Italian items like Neapolitan pizza and pasta pomodoro.

The influence of Jewish food is not just in specifically Jewish concepts, but it’s everywhere. Los Angeles' breakfast-focused spot Sqirl made waves with a green shakshuka. Nearby Kismet combines Middle Eastern flavors with California cuisine in a similar way, popularizing the flaky Yemenite Jewish bread malawach.

And then there’s the institutions, who have invested in strategies to revitalize their legendary brands and keep them relevant to a young audience. The most conspicuously overt millennial marketing attempt in recent memory has to be a speakeasy-esque concept called 2nd Floor, opened by 2nd Avenue Deli above their Upper East Side location in 2018. Here you’ll enjoy $16 crushed ice cocktails, and snacks like gefilte croquettes, bone broth, and pastrami deviled eggs.
 
Kossar’s Bialys, a legendary Lower East Side institution for bialys in NYC, reopened in 2016 inside a revamped space with new branding and a snazzy website. The iconic Katz’s Deli, now owned by 31-year old Jake Dell who took over the business from his father and uncle in 2009, added a new Brooklyn location inside a bougie food hall in 2017. This first-ever expansion of the legendary deli might have seemed improbable pre-2009. 

Fourth-generation owners Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper took over from their parents in the mid-aughts as well, expanding to open Russ & Daughters Cafe in 2014. More recently, they made a major investment for their next 100 years of business -- an 18,000 square foot space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard they’re now using as the hub of their family-run operation, Russ & Daughters. Here they finally have the space they need to mass produce speciality smoked & cured fish, baked goods like bagels & knishes, and much more. And customers finally have room to breathe (the original LES location is almost always packed shoulder to shoulder) with plenty of seating and room to order.
 
Beyond the classic “Ashkenormative” dishes found at delis and appetizing shops (matzo ball soup, lox, latkes, et al.) which have long defined what Jewish food is in America to a mass audience, the list of foods that fall under the umbrella of “Jewishness” has gotten broader and more nuanced in the last few years. Highly personal storytelling, through cuisine, has also catalyzed the ascendance of Jewish food to the mainstream. Cooks are bringing a distinctly personal point of view that highlights their own unique heritage -- and the results are more delicious than ever.

Pastis 2.0: Where 2004 Lives On

It’s an exceptionally rare event when a NYC restaurant comes back from the dead, not least after five years. So it’s quite unusual that Pastis, which choked on the real estate boom it had helped cultivate in 2014, reopened across the street from its original post earlier this month. The resurrected relic now implores us to relive the early aughts, whether we like it or not.

Keith McNally’s restaurants rarely close; some might say they’re institutional to downtown life. The vibe master has shuttered fewer restaurants than he’s opened (Pravda, Schiller’s, Bar Mulino, Cherche Midi are the only ones I can recall) with classics like Lucky Strike, Balthazar and Cafe Luxembourg all holding strong after decades. 

When I heard about Pastis’s return, I recalled the other Keith McNally openings that had marked various periods of my life in NYC. 

When I moved to New York in the summer of 2004, Schiller’s was the hot spot of the moment. I don’t remember eating a single thing there but I do remember getting wasted on rosé. I have even murkier memories of descending to the subterranean vodka bar, Pravda, in the summer of ‘05. It apparently closed in 2016, but I hadn’t really thought about it since 2008.

Me and my friend Natalie at Schiller’s in 2005

I moved into my first solo apartment, a shitbox of a West Village studio on Waverly Place in August of 2006, around the same time I started working at Eater. A few months later, Morandi opened just down the street from me at the corner of Waverly and Charles, and the blog hyped the opening like it was the second coming. I ate there only a few times for brunch and various hangs while I lived on the block. Despite the opening buzz, it was never the scene that his French-inspired places had become, at least in my experience. And the food was good, not great.

I also brunched at Balthazar from time to time during these years as well. And I slurped down oysters and perfect French fries there shortly after my culinary school final.

Balthazar is a close cousin to Pastis. Both give you the feeling that you are somewhere in Paris, and both pay homage to French classics like steak frites and frisée aux lardons. Keith McNally has essentially opened the same restaurant 6 times over the past 30 years. But, let’s face it, he’s still the man.

In its heyday, Pastis was featured on Sex and the City, referred to as “the only restaurant that seemed to exist” by lead character Carrie Bradshaw. None of that will matter to you if you are under 30 years old.

My memories of Pastis are hazy at best as well. Despite living within a 7-minute walk, I rarely visited. I always felt like a fly on the wall. And French classics have never held a special place in my heart. Nearby, Amy Sacco-owned nightspots percolated alongside one-name clubs like Lotus, Tenjune, & Cielo.

Pastis was the first restaurant that effectively gentrified the Meatpacking District. When it opened in 1999, the area was still home to actual meatpackers, trannie nightclubs and outlandish concepts like a “bra bar” called Hogs & Heifers. One of the first stories I worked on as a nymph of a journalist was all about the closing of Florent Diner, a marvelous late-night hangout for artists, partiers, punks, and other outcasts. It was the beating heart of the neighborhood.

It’s now a Madewell. 

The fashion boom that made the Meatpacking a “destination” also killed it. When designers like Stella McCartney and Diane Von Furstenberg moved in, it drove rents up, and eventually the grit of the OG meatpacking went with it.

Pastis 2.0 shares much of the original’s DNA: the subway-tiled walls, leather booths, globe light fixtures, and vintage mirrors. I can’t remember much about the original menu other than the steak frites. And that everything seemed to come with a gravy boat of béarnaise. My two recent lunches there seemed decidedly less béarnaise-y.

Stephen Starr partnered up with McNally on the relaunch, which was nice to hear. After McNally’s stroke, he lost investors and Starr swooped in to save the day. Starr himself was also a pioneer of the area, opening Morimoto and Buddakan (other “Sex and the City restaurants”) a few blocks north back in the early aughts as well.

Outside the new Pastis, cement trucks and drills drown out any al fresco conversations happening on the outdoor patio. They’re just fixing the old cobblestone, but it struck me as symbolic in some way. The noise of the new Meatpacking District makes enjoying anything about the old one increasingly difficult. Packs of tourists will hurry past your table toward the High Line and the Whitney Museum.

The burger at the new Pastis is very good. It’s mustard-laden in the same style as In-N-Out burger. I see Starr’s influence here, as the burger at Cali-inspired Upland is of a similar ilk. It has two thin patties laced with cheese, and is garnished with just the right amount of onion, pickle and special sauce, enclosed by a sesame seed bun. Basically, it’s a gussied up smashburger.

The burger at Pastis

The fries at Pastis have always been a signature item, and they remain unmarred by the passing time. Instead of a béarnaise boat, a ramekin of aioli seems much more appropriate. The raw seafood is also high-quality, especially the oysters. I had a very passable chicken sandwich the other day as well as a bite of French onion soup. But I still need to have a proper dinner here and dive into the steak frites menu. I rarely eat food that’s this heavy anymore, though. Does anyone?

Everyone seems happy to have Pastis back, and I’m certainly not complaining about it. But there is something a tad “why bother?” about the whole thing, I have to admit. The Meatpacking now has the feeling of a giant outdoor mall — with neighbors like Sephora, Restoration Hardware, Apple, and Hermès — a far cry from my earliest memories of it. What made Pastis exciting in the first place was that it was an oasis of luxury set against a gritty backdrop, now it’s just another name in the mall directory. But a lot has happened in the last 15 years. And with the incredibly stressful times we live in now, I’ll happily take a piece of 2004 anywhere I can get it.

Good-bye White Horse Tavern, a flawlessly imperfect pub

Original story: Grub Street

I was 24 years old the first time I walked into the White Horse Tavern. I’d decided to become a writer, and as the cliché dictated, I needed a waitressing job. A friend worked at the bar and offered to get me a few shifts during the summer. The pay was solid, and the hours were excellent, but what I would later come to realize was that it was also the Platonic ideal of a New York pub, and a legendary neighborhood’s beating heart. Now, it may never again be the same.

Like any great New York haunt, the White Horse has a storied literary history: It’s most notable as Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s favorite watering hole, where he drank himself to death in 1953. It was a longshoremen’s bar for most of its history, and was also a meeting place for creatives like Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, and the original staff of the Village Voice.

I started working four shifts a week and noticed two distinct sets of patrons that frequented the Horse: the daytime regulars and the nighttime revelers. Many regulars stopped in every day. On Tuesdays, “kids from the neighborhood” — many of them in their 60s and 70s — came for lunch. It was a bar where tourists, locals, college students, salty old-timers, and the occasional celebrity came together over $6 beers and decent, but by no means exceptional, burgers.

It was a regular bar, in other words. Not a dive, but not exactly upscale, either. Getting through a shift could be trying. There was no official host, no food runners, and unpredictable weather often meant we were understaffed during rushes. The place was also cash-only, which meant that if a table stiffed you on a check, which they often did after four or five rounds, it was up to you to chase them down the street. We frequently kicked out disorderly folks, a part of the job I have to admit I enjoyed, and I witnessed no fewer than ten live fistfights over my five-year tenure. It could be borderline chaos at times.

Me and some of the WH ladies after a shift, 2009

The waitresses were mostly actresses, singers, musicians, students, or underpaid PR assistants, occasionally male but mostly female. Working in the trenches at a place as crazy as the White Horse made you bond quickly with just about everyone sharing your shift. Restaurant people are ride or die: They’re the kind of friends you call at 3 o’clock in the morning to come bail you out of jail.

Jim Munson, from Rockaway, Queens, was the boss. He co-owned the bar with the Brennan family, who originally purchased it in the late ’60s. Eddie Brennan and Jimmy’s father, Jim Sr., were longshoremen together. Jimmy, as we called him, was always good to us. He was old-school, and his very presence commanded respect. He was intimidating, but known for his boundless generosity. He gave jobs to people who probably shouldn’t have had them, and he kept less-than-perfect employees on way longer than other owners might have, out of concern for their livelihoods. He once slipped me some cash before a trip to Miami so I could afford to eat at Joe’s Stone Crab.

Recently, he grew tired of running the bar and decided to sell, which he did earlier this year. You’ve probably read about the new landlord, Steve Croman, and the bar’s new proprietor, restaurateur Eytan Sugarman, who owns Times Square’s ritzy Hunt & Fish Club and has been under fire by locals about his plans to revamp the Horse. At a recent community board meeting, he pledged that he had “no intention of making any dramatic changes,” promising to keep the bar mostly as it is, but what else can you say when you take over such a beloved institution?

Maybe he won’t change it, or maybe he’ll turn it into a place that serves $19 bespoke cocktails and $85 seafood towers. Nobody seems to really know, but the bar officially closed this week and the word either way is that Sugarman has no plans to employ any of the existing kitchen or service staff. That doesn’t feel like a sign that he’s dedicated to preserving the Horse’s legacy, and the regulars who held a rally and an Irish wake for the Horse earlier this year don’t seem to trust Sugarman, either.

In New York City, the only assurance we have is that everything will get more expensive and less authentic over time. And we have a culture that has become increasingly obsessed with improvement and optimization, coupled with an ongoing decimation of communal spaces. The White Horse Tavern was never a pinnacle of food, drink, or service. Instead, it was a ramshackle place for regular folks (and, when I worked there, the occasional Gossip Girl actor). But there’s value in the idea of leaving things as they are. Not everything needs to be perfected. Not everything needs to be Instagrammable. Just knowing the old White Horse was there meant something to me, and to everyone who loved it. Some things just simply can, and should, stay the same.

Lillo Cucina Italiana in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

I will put up with a lot for good pasta. I’ve deciphered handwritten directions that led me down little Roman alleyways, forged questionable friendships to access members-only Italian social clubs, and settled for 10pm reservations at the likes of Lilia, Felix, and Bestia. For the pasta at Lillo? I’ll forgo all the familiar comforts of city dining (credit cards, personal space, alcohol) anytime you ask me. I’m willing to bet that you will too.

This seven-table restaurant no bigger than a walk-in closet is located in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn inside a former coffee shop. Passing by on the street, you would hardly notice the place. There’s no millennial-bait neon sign or succulent-laden planters in the front window. Once you make it inside, there won’t be a host to seat you. You simply sit down as soon as the last table gets up. “Lillo” Remia is the Rome-born owner; he will also most likely be your server, and if you’re lucky, your new best friend.

The offerings run the gamut from pastas like cacio e pepe and cannelloni to affogato and paninis. The menu is scrawled onto paper shopping bags and picnic plates charmingly taped to the side of the wall. Spotting the words, “ravioli ai porcini,” on a white Dixie plate was probably the moment I fell in love. There is zero ambiance here, just pure soul.

Plates will pile up next to you. Don’t panic. Lillo isn’t in the weeds — this is his modus operandi. Service is not on New York time (aka right this second). But you’ll notice your fellow diners quietly adjusting to his old world rhythm.

Start with the carciofi aka grilled artichokes and basil — a simple dish you’ve probably had a million times. They’re not the deep-fried variety often associated often with Rome, these are lightly pan-fried and ooze with garlic and olive oil, with a smoky golden char. Also impressive are mezzaluna-shaped raviolis simply filled with ricotta and spinach, atop a puddle of red sauce. A word here about the red sauce — this one tastes like it’s been cooking all day on some grandmother’s stove. This is once-in-a-New-York-lifetime red sauce. Luckily, Lillo gives you a basket of bread to sop up every last bite (and you’ll want to). The ravioli tastes painstakingly handmade, light, and perfectly al dente.

Also: the meatballs. Holy shit, the meatballs. Effortlessly light, you’ll fork three into your mouth before Lillo can even take the last plate away. Tender and perfectly seasoned — they’re aspirational meatballs.

I haven’t gotten around to trying dessert just yet, but since the owner/chef was a baker in Rome, you’ll want to try his pastry creations for sure, and the stellar Italian coffee.

While Lillo won’t be for everyone, or for every occasion (some nights you just really need that glass of wine), head here when you feel your soul waning, your energy fading, your patience wearing thin. Let this little hole in the wall restore your love of restaurants.

Polpettine en sugo