Kosher Cuisine Comes to Chasidic Foodies’ Kitchens
Where does kosher food fit into the city’s crowded foodie scene? Right into people’s own kitchens, according to a local chef on a mission to serve adventurous Jewish food to anyone who wants it.
Chef Yuda Schlass, of Crown Heights, has long bridged the divide been Jewish and foodie cultures. His parents ran hip macrobiotic kosher eatery The Cauldron in the East Village in the ’70s and later a kosher catering business in Jerusalem.
Schlass picked up the family trade, starting his own restaurant and catering business, Hassid+Hipster, last year.
“I’ve always been looking for interesting ways to do Jewish cuisine,” he said.
Now, he has a new outlet through Kitchensurfing, a site that pairs people with chefs who come to cook in clients’ own homes. As of the beginning of July, kosher food is on the menu, thanks to a partnership between the site and Schlass, who has trained chefs in strictly kosher cooking that’s anything but traditional.
Different menus on the site include a “Persian-inspired” dinner, an Israeli brunch and a family-style barbeque with grilled lamb, chicken, goose and red tuna.
“I don’t want to load up and have 20 chefs that know how to cook brisket,” he said of the site’s offerings. “I want to have someone that can cook Thai food and someone that can cook Sicilian food.”
At a launch party for the new kosher section of Kitchensurfing, chef Eric Bolyard of Eleven Madison Park and chef Ygael Tresser of The Great Georgiana prepared a seven-course kosher meal at Schlass’ home in Crown Heights. The evening showed off the high end of what Kitchensurfing offers, which can set a client back hundreds of dollars per plate, Schlass said. But costs are negotiable and the Kitchensurfing site shows meals for as low as $40 per person.
Chefs given strict kosher training and a list of kosher-only markets like BenZ’s market in Crown Heights and Pomegranate supermarket in Midwood are available for hire in the New York area only, from the Upper West Side to the Five Towns region of Long Island. Schlass said he has already seen a lot of demand in Brooklyn, which he calls “the Silicon Valley of food” — and one of the city’s more vibrant foodie and kosher hotspots, with new restaurants like Park Slope eatery Pardes and the Crown Heights wine bar Basil.
With “the expanding palate of the kosher community,” he said, he expects the new partnership with Kitchensurfing to do well.
“Everyone wants to try and taste new things, but there is such limited choices in kosher food,” he said. “If you’re reading food blogs and you read about a chef in a non-kosher restaurant, you’ll never be able to taste their food. But through Kitchensurfing, you could actually get one of the chefs who work at one of these restaurants.”
hey!
whats the hasgocha?
Toshov Hashchunah,
hasgocha protis!
declasse' intellectual
where is his gloves, just because he cooks and promotes kosher, food safety should be included in the mix–therefore the need for gloves if he is preparing food for others
big problem in kosher kitchens is mixing foods especially the bacteria issue
why
do you wear gloves when you cook in your kitchen?
recycle
This is an old article- why repeat it?
To declase'
The best chefs in the world don’t use gloves, gloves only need to be used when handling already cooked food. Handling ingredients before cooking need not gloves, as the cooking kills any bacteria. Of course washing your hands before and after handling food is necessary which I’m sure he does.
Mendel
What’s a “foodie?”
Citizen Berel
It’s a creature what his whole existence is dedicated to food.
It’s a false pejorative, what you should never apply to another yid.
malcab
my hub and i love the cauldren – was sad to see it close
hatzlacha in your new adventure
cauldron fan
i think this is a great article and so what if it was on line before
my husband and i never knew about this chef and we hope to eat his food one day soon
thank you for printing