By Mark D. Zimmerman
Kosherpalooza, a food festival featuring kosher dairy and meat items, cooking demonstrations, wine tastings and more, was recently held for the first time at the Meadowlands Expo Center in New Jersey. Thousands of attendees sampled dried pink pineapple, miniature steak tartares served in crispy tapioca shells, CBD peanut butter cups, and more. Meanwhile, new kosher restaurants are opening across the country, including Vitali’s Kitchen, a dairy cafe in Minnesota’s Mall of America, Anita’s Gelato, a popular Israeli chain that has opened a location in the Los Angeles suburb of Tarzana, and Smash House, a burger joint which just opened its second location in Florida. What other new kosher restaurant is generating a lot of buzz in the Jewish community?
A. Masuda Omakase, which had previously offered in-home kosher sushi catering, has now opened a dine-in location in midtown New York. The restaurant features fresh crispy hand rolls with fish flown in from Japan.
B. Guy Fieri opened a kosher branch of his restaurant chain Chicken Guy! in North Miami Beach. The fast food restaurant serves the chicken tenders and bowls that are offered at all of their locations; the primary difference is the lack of a cheese option in their sandwiches and bowls.
C. Veal Chop Sticks, a kosher Chinese restaurant, opened in April in Lakewood, New Jersey, which is the home of Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest Yeshiva in the United States. The community had been without a kosher Chinese restaurant since the Cho-Sen Kitchen had closed during the pandemic in 2021.
D. Ee Efshar is a new kosher dairy restaurant that opened in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Ee Efshar is Hebrew for “impossible,” and the restaurant features menu items made with the Impossible Foods company products such as Impossible beef, Impossible sausage, and Impossible chicken tenders, all of which are plant-based products that can be served with dairy foods. Featured on the restaurant’s menu are lasagna, cheeseburgers, beef and cheddar casserole, and meat and cheese quesadillas, along with other traditional meat and dairy recipes which cannot normally be eaten by observant Jews.
Mark Zimmerman is the author of a series of Jewish trivia books, under the title RASHI, RAMBAM and RAMALAMADINGDONG: A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun.