Foodaism.com

Opinion

Moroccan Candied Eggplant

by

My partner David Suissa returned from a family Passover in Montreal with a gift for me from his mother, Meme Suissa: berenjenitas en dulce.

Moroccan candied eggplants are a post-Passover treat, laid out on a groaning table of sweets for the celebration of Mimouna. The last time I tasted them was in a Moroccan Jewish home in the Musrara quarter of Jerusalem in 1984 — and the flavor lingered.  Poaching the baby eggplants in sugar syrup turns them into something besides a vegetable, and other than candy.  The spice mixture — ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice — makes them intensely fragrant as well.  

The recipe below comes from from Dulce lo vivas/ Live Sweet: La Reposteria Sefardi by Ana Bensadon, which is also the source of my go-to olive pil chocolate mousse dessert.

How do you eat these eggplants?  With a cup of mint tea and a pile of Meme Suissa's Anise Biscuits.

RECIPE

Berenjenitas en dulce (Moroccan Candied Baby Eggplant)

Ingredients

  • 25 baby eggplants – as small as possible

  • 1.5 kilos (7-1/2 cups) sugar

  • 500 grams (1-1/2 cups) honey

  • crushed fresh ginger (according to taste)

  • 8 cloves

  • 1 stick of cinnamon

  • a few grains of allspice

 

Directions

Poke the raw eggplants all over with a fork.

Put them in a (large, heavy, enamel) casserole, cover with cold water and add the sugar.

Boil for 10 minutes, lower the flame and simmer for 2 or 3 hours over a low flame.

Remove from the heat.

Make a (little sack) with a fine cloth or gauze and put in all the spices.  Add the spices and half the honey to the casserole and return it to the flame.

When the pot begins to boil, lower the flame and simmer over a low flame for 2 or 3 hours.

Add the rest of the honey.  The eggplants have to cook for another 2 or 3 hours more, until they turn very dark.

A High Holiday Restaurant Guide to Koreatown

by

Each year my wife Rabbi Naomi Levy holds the High Holiday services for her outreach congregation Nashuva at the large, round ecumenical Church of Religious Science in Koreatown, at Berendo and 6th St.  Over a thousand people attend.  They ask my wife, “Can I really change?”  “Can I overcome my challenges?”  “Can I achieve my dreams?”

And they ask me, “Hey, where can we eat?”

You tell me which is the more urgent question. 

Most Nashuvites come from the Westside, and nothing boosts  the holy, meditative spirit of the holidays like finding a place for dinner in Koreatown so you can beat the eastbound traffic on the I-10.

Since the Jewish Journal offices have always been in Koreatown, I’m the person to ask. There’s dinner Rosh Hashanah evening, pre-fast dinner on Yom Kippur, and for those who are so inclined, after service lunches and dinners (and drinks) in the neighborhood.

Two big caveats here. The first is that there are no kosher restaurants in Ktown. Just the opposite: for the strictly kosher, Koreatown is the Red Light district.  Just how bad is it? There are restaurants that specialize in live seafood sushi, where the chef sets a living, squirming shrimp or octopus on your plate and you’re expected to swallow it as is.  What’s that like?  I have no clue, ask Jonathan Gold.  I’m not kosher, but I draw the line at eating things trying to crawl out of my mouth.

Second, Korean food is heavy on garlic, chili and vinegar.  Keep that in mind when you’re on your way to an event where you’ll be sitting really close to the people you love for a couple of hours.

But if you are a bit adventurous,  kosher-style, or treyf-light, Koreatown is one of the great food neighborhoods in the USA.  You are in luck—being able to combine the uplift of Nashuva or other  nearby services (Wilshire Blvd. Temple, or Ohr HaTorah, or Temple Israel of Hollywood) with the opportunity to leave the Ahi Caesar and Turkey Cobb confines of the Westside and taste some of the great foods of LA.  Good food, served with hospitality and warmth—for me that is always a spiritual experience.

So, where do we eat? My picks are below.  It is in no way the Wiki of Ktown.  For that click on the Yelp link at the end, and you’re on your own.  There are more restaurants per square block in Koreatown than any other part of Los Angeles.  I haven’t tried them all, and I’m not listing places I haven’t been. I’m also focusing on places close to 6th and Berendo, in alphabetical order (though by chance my favorite is first, and it’s not Korean). 

Here goes (and please email me or comment below with your own suggestions/corrections):

My Favorites

Anima


698 S Vermont Ave


Los Angeles, CA 90005

(213) 738-0799

How fitting that my top High Holiday pick actually means, “soul” in Italian. This happens to be my favorite Italian restaurant in all LA, much less Koreatown.  Giuseppe Musso, the Rimini-born chef of Amarone and, formerly,  All’Angolo,  is at the stove.   Be nice and patient to him, and he will make you feel like you’re at his mother’s house. His pastas are homemade, his pizza, is hand-stretched, his Bolognese made the co-owners of Capo swoon when I brought them there for lunch.  If fried zucchini blossoms are on the specials boards, order them.  If you lived in a quiet neighborhood in any great Italian city, the local place would be a lot like Anima.  That it’s two blocks from my office in Ktown is a small blessing.  One downside: no liquor license, yet.

Beer Belly (and other bars)

532 S Western Ave

Los Angeles, CA 90020


http://beerbellyla.com

May not allow children–CHECK.  But good gastropub food and beer, open after 5 pm. 

There are dozens of bars including several hip new ones, in the area.   Beer Belly is among the new crop, which includes Biergarten and Lock and Key. Brass Money is an old standby (post-atonement karaoke, anyone?) along with The Prince, which serves Korean sports bar food.  I left the bars off this list because they are more for drinking and snacking—but if you want to start the new year with OB and duck fat fries, be my guest. 

Bob’s Café

3130 Wilshire Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90010

(213) 387-6554

This place gets my vote as the most deceptive restaurant in Los Angeles.  You think it’s just an office sandwich joint at the bottom of a nondescript building.  But Bob and his lovely wife Kurdia are Kurds from northern Syria (yes, there).  They and their efficient sons run a place that has northern Syrian food to rival that of other local greats like Marouch.  Try the lentil soup with Aleppo pepper, the hummus, kebab, and Kurdia’s homemade kibbeh.  Of course, you can also get a turkey sandwich.  A few seats, and a TV set tuned to CNN for atmosphere, but you'll go back for the soup and kibbeh.

BCD Tofu

3575 Wilshire Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90010

(Wilshire and Ardmore)

Open 24 hours. Really clean and efficient and inexpensive. The organic tofu soup—which is the reason to go here– has a meat broth so beware.
 But they have jop jae noodles that are veggie and excellent tofu salad, as well as BBQ chicken, etc.  

Chinese House


3280 W 6th St


Los Angeles, CA 90010

(213) 385-9799

You want the full American immigrant experience?  I got your dive right here.  Take an honest hard-working Korean family, set them up on a street corner in LA, and watch them work their asses off turning out one solid Korean-inflected Chinese dish after another, day after day, until their children graduate Harvard.  I’ve been to Chinese House a dozen times for lunch.  Cheap, friendly and very fresh. 

Chosun Galbi

3330 W Olympic Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90019

Phone number

(323) 734-3330

Not my favorite BBQ, but clean and popular with the Westside crowd. Bulgogi and other dishes are all at a high level. By the way, there are many All You Can Eat BBQ places in Ktown.  You pay one price per person per table, and as much lower-quality meat as you want comes out of the freezer.   I've tried them and generally you get what you pay for.  

Dan Sung Sa

3317 W 6th St

Los Angeles, CA 90020

Deep Ktown—just across the street from Nashuva’s services.  A noir-ish, dark but often packed place (at night), this bar also has way above average Korean bar food. Skewers, wings, soups—that sort of thing.

El Cholo

Western and Olympic

A short drive away and an old standby.  What can I say, it’s not going to make anyone’s top ten list, but it is convivial, good for large groups and dependably Mexican-American. Plus many many years ago they gave me a paycheck on their catering team, so I’m loyal.

EMC Seafood and Raw Bar 

3500 W 6th St
  Ste 101
 

Los Angeles, CA 90020 



(213) 351-9988 
emcseafood.com

Crowded at times, always popular, especially at Happy Hour.  Good for seafood (of course).

Escala

3451 W 6th St

Los Angeles, CA 90020

A new South American place with a limited menu of curated dishes and drinks.  Very pretty and comfortable.  Try the whole fish with garlic sauce and a tropical salad.  Escala is in the old Chapman Market complex, one of LA’s prettier buildings, though a parking nightmare.

Gualeguetza

3014 W Olympic Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90006

Phone number

(213) 427-0608

The temple of Oaxacan gastronomy in LA is a short car ride away or a long stroll.  Moles as complex as Mexican politics, and lighter tlayudas and other regional specialties as well. Spacious and friendly too, with live entertainment and a constant sense of celebration.   This place also has the city’s first mezcal bar, with dozens of hard-to-find varieties of tequila’s far more interesting cousins.  The bartenders will hold your hand (metaphorically speaking) and walk you through what silver tequila drinkers have been missing. Go easy.

HMS Bounty


3357 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 385-7275

Moderate prices and nothing more or less than moderate food.    Dark bar atmosphere with a nautical theme, a throwback to when Sinatra ate here (he was a co-founder).  Steaks, fish, chicken and martinis are good, and the service staff  is friendly and familial.  Want more than steamed veggies and a plain potato with your plain grilled meat?  Where do you think you are, Gjelina?

Jun Won
 

3100 W 8th St
  Ste 101
 

Los Angeles, CA 90005 



(213) 383-885

Jun Won is more graduate school Koreatown food.  Slightly hidden, a largely Korean clientele (but a friendly,  American-Korean owner) and one of the best dishes of steamed cod you’ll have.  Steamed cod of the gods.  Excellent banchan and seafood pancake as well.

King of New York Pizza Pub  

3281 Wilshire Blvd
 

Los Angeles, CA 90005
 

(213) 389-3500
  konypizzeria.com

Despite the tone deaf acronym (don’t these people watch YouTube?) KONY  pizza is the best in Ktown after Anima, and there is a good selection of beer.  Don’t expect anything great in the salads or sides department.  Plenty of space—check out the back room.

Kobawoo 

698 S Vermont Ave


Los Angeles, CA  90005


(213) 389-7300

Next to Anima.  When Yotam Ottlolenghi came to LA for the first time, he told me this was the only restaurant on his list.  He wanted to try the acorn noodles, and you will too.  A rare vegan Ktown treat, cold and soothing.  Kobawoo—which is always crowded—also specializes in seafood pancake.

Marouch

4905 Santa Monica Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90029

(323) 662-9325

This is two miles from KTown, but on the way if you come via the 101.  Still some of my favorite Middle Eastern food in LA, with Lebanese wine to go with it.  If you can’t stomach Korean, this is a good place to stop on the way to shul.

Novel Café


3760 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 388-3383

In the Wiltern building. You can get salads, entreees, sandwiches…. very decent, comfortable and safe, like Novel Cafe in Westwood, but larger.

Parks BBQ

955 S Vermont Ave


213-380-1717


High quality, not cheap. Many consider it the best.  I’m in the Soot Bull Jeep camp.

Pot/Commisary/Café


3515 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 368-3030

The new restaurants in Roy Choi’s empire are at his newly made-over LINE Hotel.  For years I ducked in to this place when it was a cast-off Radisson– I could write my columns in utter silence because the hallways had more ghosts than guests.  Now it is hip, beautiful and happening.  Like his fellow Korean-American innovator David Chang, Choi isn't satisfied doing the nicest possible versions of peasant food, which is what comes out of a lot of high-end roasting ovens in LA (and not that there's anything wrong with that).  His food is playful, packed with flavor and constantly new.  Downstairs the bar serves until 5 pm.  A brief menu features tuna sandwiches, burgers, shrimp cocktail, LA chowder, grilled cheese– bar food.  But the chowder comes in a Stanley Thermos (piping hot) and the main courses come nestled in dumpling steamers, wrapped in kitchen towels.   As for  Commisary, it  is a fully realized flight of fancy– a greenhouse on top of a once-neglected pool deck, removed from the city and deep in the heart of it.  Don't rush a meal here. The menu is pictograms– point to a drawing of a scallop, sea bass,  steak or asparagus, and the waiter will describe how the kitchen is making it that day, and you will not be disappointed.  Scallops come seared in an avocado/garlic/tomatillo cream.  The tomato salad is confit heirloom tomatos with nectarine and jalepeno slices.  The finest salad of a long hot summer.  You'll want a cocktail too.  If Line is the epicenter of the Ktown revival, Commisary is the neighborhood's first non-Korean destination restaurant. 

Seongbukdong  

3303 W 6th St


Los Angeles, CA 90020
 


(213) 738-8977

Right across from Nashuva’s location, in a minimall, small and crowded, with the best Korean braised short ribs in LA.  Bar none. Pricey,  but…wow.

Soot Bull Jeep


3136 W 8th St


Los Angeles, CA 90005


Your clothes will smell like smoke and garlic. They use real charcoal, and high quality ingredients.  Their banchan include a spinach salad that I find addictive. No kosher or vegetarian option. My favorite Korean BBQ in a city full of them.

Taylors Steak House


8th and Ardmore


Dashiell Hammett ate here, along with every USC alum of a certain generation. Dark. Clubby. Great martinis, steak and grilled fish. Expensive. 

Inexpensive and/or Fast Food

Chipotle


3183 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90005


(213) 884-4094

At the corner of Vermont and Wilshire.  This block on either side of the street features Coffee Bean, Starbucks, a sub shop, one of those frozen yogurterias, a mediocre Japanese place (Wasabi) and a few other Metro subway-stop-close fast food places.  Cross Vermont and there’s  a Denny’s.  No one will judge.

Dino’s Chicken

2575 W Pico Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90006

Dinos has a few more seats than Pollo a la Brasa, and the chickens here are cooked El Pollo Loco style on a grill.  They come with a mound of fries that could carb-load you for a marathon.

Pollo a la Brasa

764 S Western Ave

Los Angeles, CA 90005

Phone number

(213) 387-1531

My theory is this place breaks every code in the books, but that the city inspectors give it a pass because the food is so damn good.  It’s a dive with just a few tables, bus stop adjacent (A “No Free Restroom” sign is the  décor).  Garlic and chili- rubbed chickens spin over a roaring fire of cured oak.  Everything else is commentary. Inexpensive, fast and maybe among the top three chickens you’ll eat in your life. In Mexico and Peru places like this are a dime a dozen, but here in LA, this place is a rare gem.

For a complete listing of restaurants in the area, click here:

YELP!

Again, please email me or comment below with your own suggestions/corrections.  Shana Tova!

Koreatown Lunch

by

At night Koreatown is Manhattan– packed restaurants, backed up valet stands, lines out the doors to even the diviest BBqs.  By day, it's a different story.  You might be the only customer. You'll see the families behind these family-run places.  You'll see the servers plucking the stems off a haystack of sweet peas piled on a dining table. Or you'll see this: the daughter sitting alone in a place that by midnite wll  be crammed full of hipsters.  She'll be watching educational cartoons in English.  Her immigrant parents will be peeling a pile of fishy-smelling brown roots, getting ready for the dinner rush.  And the girl?  She'll be going to medical school.

I took this picture when I had a lunch meeting at Yan Bian on 3rd and Western Friday afternoon.  We were the only customers. We let the owner bring us three of her favoirte Korean-Chinese dishes, all of them spiked with pointy red chilis.  My favorite things: Spicy chicken. Beef with mushrooms and chili.  And this picture.

Why Ditmas Kitchen and Cocktails on Pico Will Succeed

by

High-end kosher restaurants in LA last about as long as an American Idol’s singing career.

Every few months, one arrives in a blaze of publicity and expectation—Prime Grill, La Seine, etc.— and a captive audience of people who keep kosher and are wealthy enough to drop a couple hundred bucks on a bottle of Castel rushes out to try it. And  then faster than you can say “overpriced” the restaurant vanishes, leaving behind a contrail of kvetching.

There’s a lot of reasons to think that Ditmas Kitchen and Cocktails may be different.  There’s even a good chance—you heard it here first—Ditmas may succeed.

Ditmas occupies the old Bocca space on Pico Blvd. near Robertson.  Bocca, an import from the Old Country (meaning, Encino) was one of the high-end kosher places that didn’t take.  Ditmas moved into the large space—which began life as a Coco’s family restaurant—and has transformed it into a vibey, gastro-hang with zero attitude, a sense of fun—and solid, soulful food.

Chef Alex Reznik created Ditmas.  The former “Top Chef” also headed the kitchen at La Seine– but there I got the feeling he was a show pony trotted out by the owners, then made to cook what they thought kosher LA wanted to eat.

At Ditmas,  the menu is all Reznik.  It combines a sentimental homage to his East Coast roots—Ditmas is the name of the Brooklyn avenue that splits Boro Park from Flatbush–  with a firm sense of what everybody wants to eat these days—high-quality ingredients, simple preparations,  more farmhouse than fusion. 

That may explain why the clientele doesn’t look particularly Jewish– and I mean that in a good way.  There’s no way to know for sure, but Ditmas seems to draw people in because of its food,  atmosphere,  service and—get this—absolutely fair prices. The fact that Ditmas is kosher doesn’t limit its audience, but  expands it to include kosher-observant Jews.  The first night I ate there, a large crowd of 20-somethings occupied a nearby table, and none of them or the other guests in our section looked like your typical kosher restaurant clientele.

The large space has been suitably hipstered to incorporate earth tone upholstery, large expanses of dark wood, and an eat-in bar area with a high, common table.

Of course, then, there’s a cocktail list, and of course it features house-made liquors, tonics and craft-brewed beers. I had an old-fashioned with a dose of thyme, and we ordered a dish of house-pickled vegetables off the bar menu.  The bright pickled vegetables  had something a lot of kosher restaurants fear—serious red chili heat.  I wanted another bowl.

The starters include a much-Yelped-about steak tartare with house-made mustard and  quail egg.  We ordered the Jerusalem artichoke soup, which a waiter pours over a garnish of pea shoots and yam chips.  The texture was, to be charitable, rustic–  more of a vegetable puree than a soup. But the flavor was pure and simple.

The main course choices revolve largely around cows.  Braised short ribs with polenta.  Fresh pasta with short ribs.  Lots of steaks, all simply grilled and served with fries and a house made A-1 sauce.   Other choices include sablefish, salmon, and a grilled chicken.

We ordered a 6-ounce “Eye of Rib Eye”—sounds like a clue in a pirate movie—and the chicken.  Both were easy to like—simply prepared, ample, and, in the case of the chicken, surrounded by carefully crafted cilantro coulis, chanterelles and rosemary-scented gnocchi.  

Dinner prices are about $50 per person with wine.  That’s what you’d pay for similar meal at a similar restaurant like Waterloo and City or Cooks County—meaning there’s no “kosher surcharge,” even though kosher restaurants do have built-in economic disadvantages (not open Friday night, higher meat costs, etc).

I’d go back to Ditmas—and that’s something I never said about the long list of high-end kosher places  that have opened and closed in the past.  Reznik gets it:  if there’s no sense of joy, there’s no sense in eating out, kosher or not.

In that  Reznik takes his place among new generation of chefs creating kosher in the image of Alice Waters and Richard Olney, not your bar mitzvah caterer.  West of Ditmas on Pico, Katsuji Tanabe is serving porkless but authentic Mexican street food at Mexikosher.  And east of Ditmas,  Chef Todd Aarons has taken over the “26” space.  I haven’t been there yet, but at Tierra Sur in Oxnard, Aarons demonstrated his knack for superb farm-to-table wood-fired kosher cooking.  In short, I can hardly wait to eat more kosher on Pico.

And that’s something I haven’t said for a while.

Ditmas Kitchen + Cocktails

8731 W Pico Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90035 

(310) 271-9300


ditmasla.com

The Kosher Bacon Donut

by

Harry Ben-Zvi, the founder and owner of something called The Glazed Donut Bistro, had a problem.  He opened a new donut shop, and as a strongly-identified Jew, he wanted to post a mezuzah, the ritual amulet marking the entrance to a  Jewish home or business, on his door.

The problem was … well, I should let him explain, in an email he sent me a couple of weeks ago.

And yes, that really is a glazed donut bacon sandwich:

Being a proud yet fairly secular Jewish man opening up an artisan donut shop, I found myself facing a religious dilemma.

I wanted to hang a big, beautiful Mezuzah on the front door so everyone would know who owned this great looking shop.

Earning some extra points with the man upstairs couldn't hurt the new venture either.

Problem being, the donut shop is not Kosher…not even close.

Could I still have my Mezuzah? Yes

Should I still have my Mezuzah? On the front door?

As the Maimonides has long since passed to answer this most monumental of questions, I asked my old Rabbi.

The big hearted orthodox Rabbi asked about the shop being open on the Sabbath.

I replied; “This location, these rents, not much choice”

The Rabbi understood.

Ever the faithful solider, the Rabbi moved on to the menu.

“Are the donuts kosher?” asked the Rabbi.

I said no.

“You know, making donuts kosher is easy” the Rabbi followed up .

I smiled and told him; “Not these donuts”.

“What do you mean” asked the Rabbi.

I pointed to a picture of our Maple Bacon Glazed Donut and explained

(I didn't have the heart to mention our Glazed Pulled Pork Donut Sliders).

“So Rabbi, what's the call? Can I put up my Mezuzah on the front door?”

The Rabbi contemplated and thoughtfully replied:

The mitzvah of hanging a Mezuzah on the front door would be nullified the moment a  Jewish patron unwittingly eats treif.

The compromise; Forgo the Mezuzah on the front door and hang a Mezuzah on the office door.

So what is a Jew to do?

It's a free country and I could hang my Mezuzah on the front door…or I could split the baby (or in this case, the donut) in half and temper my Jewish pride with some Judaic humility.

The Mezuzah will go up on my office door, and I will sell maple bacon glazed donuts and pulled pork sliders on the Sabbath.

As I am a G-d fearing man, I hope the big guy upstairs understands.

Stuffed: Thanksgiving on Hope Street

by

Last Sunday, my job was to make stuffing for 400 people. I said I’d do it because there’s a part of me that prefers to forget that it’s been 25 years since I was a caterer, and I assumed it would be as easy now as it was then.

Every year for the past nine years, Nashuva, the spiritual community led by my wife, Rabbi Naomi Levy, hosts a Thanksgiving meal at Hope Street Family Center downtown. Hope Street provides childcare, counseling and other social services to thousands of at-risk families. About 100 Nashuva volunteers from the Westside, the Valley and Silver Lake provide a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, along with arts-and-crafts projects for the children and care packages to take home. 

So, on the prior Thursday evening, I went to Costco and bought 20 pounds of onions and 15 pounds each of carrots and celery. I filled my car with enough croutons to stuff a twin-sized mattress. At home, I reached far into our storage closet to find the industrial-sized pot I last used to photograph our infant son in, with his head poking over the rim. He’s 20 now.

Things started simply enough. I chopped the vegetables, sautéed them over two burners in two quarts of canola oil, added seasoning and broth. The kitchen smelled good, like Thanksgiving.

I tossed the croutons with some chopped chestnuts, then portioned it all out in large foil banquet pans. I ladled the hot broth over the croutons and began to mix. I used a big spatula, and the boiling-hot stuffing lifted up and — onto my hands. I screamed. The glutinous mass attached the heat to my skin like culinary napalm. I jumped away — and the whole tray tumbled onto the floor, splattered my ankles. I screamed again. I lurched for the sink, my feet slid in a mound of stuffing, and down I went.

I lay on the floor, burned, bruised. My dogs wandered in to lick the turkey dressing off my wrists, like jackals on the battlefield.

Eventually, I cleaned up, cut my losses and assembled the remaining pans. On Sunday morning, I cooked them, and by lunch they were beside the turkeys in the buffet line, just like I’d planned it.

Hundreds of moms, dads and kids came to the center at Hope Street, just south of Pico, that day. People sat down with their food and began to eat. Tania Benacerraf, director of the family preservation program at Hope Street, spoke about all the things the organization does, day in and day out, to help people raise their children in health and safety. 

Over the years, as Nashuva and Hope Street collaborated on many projects, I’ve listened to the stories — of women escaping abuse; of fathers overcoming addiction; of people working two, or even three jobs to make a life for their children. I’m a very lucky person to be able to complain about my mishaps making stuffing. 

We ate together at long tables in a large function room. On a patio outside, the children created spin-art and decorated picture frames. 

Around this time of year, countless Americans stand where I stood that day: helping to serve Thanksgiving dinners in a homeless shelter, a halfway house or a soup kitchen, doing something small, even symbolic, to share this country’s enormous bounty with those less fortunate.

Nashuva’s Thanksgiving meals with Hope Street have spawned deeper ties between the two organizations. But there can be no pretending that by serving turkey and gravy we are somehow righting deep systemic wrongs. The morning after we volunteered, Congress is still debating a Farm Bill that plans to cut $40 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — a program so many of the hard-working moms and dads at Hope Street depend upon to feed their kids and help lift their families out of poverty. The morning after, Washington, D.C., is still treating the right to decent health care as a political game, rather than a national priority. The morning after, these people are still struggling, and I have a funny anecdote about stuffing.

But while the debates in D.C. all seem to diminish us as a nation, shared moments can still lift us up. We reach out to help some others, and they are kind enough to accept our need to help. 

Perhaps we need to help because we know from experience that ours is a nation of enormous, almost unbelievable wealth. We have seen with our own eyes that we waste more food than those we serve can ever eat. We have been in private homes larger than all of Hope Street. We need to serve because something needs to change.

Just as the families of Hope Street were settling into the meal, my wife stood and offered a blessing in English, as Julie Drucker, a Nashuva member and organizer of the event together with Carol Taubman, translated Naomi’s prayer into Spanish.

“Sometimes life can be very difficult,” Naomi said. “And we struggle to make a living and take care of our families. Thanksgiving is a time to take hope in the future and to know that together we can help each other to make a better life. And we take a moment to give thanks to God for our lives, for our friends, for the gift of community and for being together here today.”

Amen — and Happy Thanksgiving.

Rob Eshman is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. E-mail him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Twitter @foodaism.

My lunch with a Los Angeles Tea Partier

by

Of the 3,977 angry e-mails I received last week, one stood out.

“I am a Jew, a member of Temple Emanuel in Los Angeles, and the founder of the largest local, grass-roots Tea Party group in Los Angeles called the Hancock Park Patriots,” Mark Sonnenklar wrote.

“I, and many of my fellow leaders in the Tea Party movement, are pretty upset about the recent ‘Tea-hadist’ cartoon published in the Jewish Journal. I would like to discuss this matter with you. Would you be open to a phone call?”

Sonnenklar was referring to the political cartoon in the Oct. 11 issue of the Jewish Journal. Our longtime cartoonist, Steve Greenberg, portrayed a Tea Party activist as a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest labeled “Govt Shutdown.” You get the idea.

Tea Party-affiliated Web sites reposted the cartoon and urged readers to e-mail me their outrage. It worked. Overnight, my inbox filled with thousands of e-mails railing against the cartoon. The vast majority of the letter writers were not Journal readers. Many repeated the charge that the cartoon “mocked the actual victims of Islamic terror,” and I took that to heart. I issued a public apology for the cartoon’s insensitivity to terror victims. 

Many letters were vicious; some were strange. 

“May God show you the error of your wicked ways and give you the redemption you clearly do not deserve!!” Scott Walker wrote.

 “You should … use your amazing resources to find out just how many Muslim Brotherhood members are working in the White House,” Charles Walter wrote. “Did you know Obama has a ‘Sharia Czar’?”

Truthrevolt.org, an intelligent conservative site, originally flagged the cartoon. But a site named PatriotAction.com had picked up the cause, and many of the e-mails turned outright anti-Semitic.

“Jews have caused [sic] the world by stealing land instead of just paying for it in the first place, I guess I can understand the idiocy,” someone calling himself Ron Paul wrote. 

The few writers who identified themselves as Jews were not much kinder.

“This may come as a shock to you, Comrade Eshman,” Aaron Shuster wrote, “but not all Jews share in your utopian socialist agenda for Islamic hegemony.”

Amid these screeds, Sonnenklar’s civility stood out. So did his Web site. It listed seven action steps activists could take. No. 7 was, “Click here to sign up for the Koch Brothers Check Distribution” — a cheeky swipe at those who say Tea Partiers are just dupes of the 1 percent. 

I called Sonnenklar, and three hours later we met for lunch at Le Petit Greek on Larchmont.

Sonnenklar is 44, a corporate lawyer, father of three, and he bears more than a glancing resemblance to Bradley Cooper. He wore blue jeans and a trim striped dress shirt, untucked, along with the standard L.A. three-day growth of beard.

We decided not to talk about “it” — the cartoon — until at least after the grilled halloumi.

Sonnenklar told me he had established the Hancock Park Patriots in 2010, because he was “tired of not doing anything. I wanted to make a difference.”

Between 50 and 100 people from all over Los Angeles attend the Hancock Park Patriots’ monthly meetings. Sonnenklar estimates about 20 percent of them are Jewish.

“The goal is not to become a third party,” he said, “but to become more powerful within the GOP. There needs to be a Tea Party to bring the Republican Party back to its core principles.” 

Those principles: smaller government, greater individual liberty, protecting free enterprise.

The Constitution is sacred, he said — everything has to flow from that.

I asked him: Don’t many progressives want the same things? More efficient government, greater liberty, etc.? And isn’t the Supreme Court the arbiter of the Constitution, and didn’t it uphold Obamacare …

“It’s a very politicized court,” he interrupted, and then batted away my arguments.

He saw President Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to “fundamentally transform” the country as a declaration of war against America. I saw it, in the context of a boilerplate campaign speech, as a promise to the middle class.

We were like two doctors who agreed easily on what an ailing patient looked like, but not on the cure.

“I’m not a moderate,” he said, smiling. “I’m just more articulate than most.”

I asked him how that flies in his Reform Beverly Hills synagogue, which has a liberal reputation.

“I have no doubt if people found out I was a leader of a Tea Party group, I would be ostracized,” he said. “As a conservative in Los Angeles, you can’t be open. You’re going to be the one guy at the dinner party who stands out. The Tea Party is almost a support group. Now I feel I can be open about who I am and my political views.

“We are under attack by the hard-left establishment,” he went on. “They are using Alinsky-like tactics to undermine any opposing point of view. That’s why this cartoon hit such a nerve.”

Sonnenklar knew I had publicly apologized, but he pushed further. Would I run a cartoon of Obama in a Hitler mustache?

That didn’t sound very funny or clever to me, I said — and talk about insensitive. I did point out that the Journal publishes opinions from many different perspectives, because thoughtful debate is a core Jewish value. 

We reached an impasse on many points, but it was a good, long lunch — a useful outcome to an unfortunate incident. After all, thoughtful argument may be a core Jewish value. Agreement — not so much.

Rob Eshman is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. E-mail him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Twitter @foodaism.

Israeli Breakfast Buffet Parfait

by

The Israeli Breakfast Buffet Parfait is my attempt to recreate Israel in a glass.

The normal breakfast in an Israeli hotel is an endless buffet of fresh vegetables, pickles, olives, salted fish, fresh cheeses, boiled eggs, fresh breads, olive oil and za'atar.  I was 12 when I first laid eyes on one, and it was THE one: the breakfast buffet at the Sheraton Tel Aviv, which back then was the upscale American hotel of choice.  The buffet was laid out on huge tables, and one thing struck my groggy, jet-lagged pre-teen eyes immediately: no pancakes.  No sweet sickly syrup smell.  No greasy bacon (of course).  And even more astonishing: for breakfast,  these people ate VEGETABLES.

I fell in love.

My taste buds have always leaned salty over sweet, and the combination of truly good tomatoes and cucumbers, the marjoram-and-sesame spice mixed called za'atar, and fresh olive oil, along with homemade yogurts and soft fresh goat cheese– that obliterated the desire for all the oily Grand Slams and IHOP platters I'd called breakfast in America.  After one of those gut bombs I felt gross.  After an Israeli breakfast, I felt– well, Israeli.

The Israeli breakfast buffet evolved from kibbutz breakfast, when the workers would come in to the dining hall from their very early morning labors and go down the mess line, essentially eating what they or other kibbutzim had grown and made.  

I've since had dozens of Israeli breakfasts, at Hiltons, Dans, little B & Bs, private homes, and of course kibbutzim.  They range from spartan (the kibbutz) to over-the-top (Dan Panorama).  The one that stands out as the best was at Mitzpe Yamim, a resort overlooking the Sea of Galilee.  The vegetables were locally grown, the breads homemade, the cheese made from goats I petted on my way to the dining hall, the olive oil local and even the za'atar picked and dried and ground on site.  That's the Israeli breakfast I dream of.

And it was the one I tried to recreate in a glass this morning. 

I diced cucumbers, tomatoes and avocado, and layered them in a martini glass with Redhill Farms goat yogurt, along with chopped kalamata olives. I topped it with za'atar and strong green olive oil (Sultan from Lebanon, $17 for 3 liters at Sunland Produce– get some).

And the first taste: Israel.  Mitzpe Yamim. 2007.  Take me back.

[RECIPE]

Foodaism's Israeli Breakfast Buffet Parfait

(Serves 4) 

1 large fresh tomato, diced

1 cucumber, diced

1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted

1 avocado, diced

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

1 T. za'atar (optional)

2 cups goat yogurt, or any high quality yogurt

In 4 shallow glasses, layer cucumber, tomatoes and avocado and yogurt in any order you like.  You can blend  the three or make separate layers.   Top with yogurt and chopped olives and za'atar, and drizzle with olive oil.

Serve.

Anthony Bourdain’s visit to Israel: Parts unknown

by

If you like food and you like Israel, this past week’s episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” was a win-win.

And I say that despite the criticism Bourdain has received from the people who profess to love Israel. To them, he presented a biased, pro-Palestinian screed disguised as a food show.

To me, he showed exactly how smart, curious people should engage a complex country — and how Israelis and Palestinians benefit from that approach. 

To food lovers, Bourdain is a star. He wrote the best-selling memoir of life as a professional chef, “Kitchen Confidential,” then took his biting insights on the road, first in the Travel Channel series “No Reservations,” and now for CNN. He travels the world reporting his perceptions of people and their predicaments, always using food as the way into their lives.

His first experience with Israel wasn’t pleasant: Bourdain was filming in Beirut in 2006 when the Second Lebanon War broke out, and he found himself at the wrong end of Israeli rockets.

I wondered in a column if that experience cooled Bourdain to the idea of visiting Israel, despite the fact that the country has undergone a food revolution. I even started a Facebook page to get fans to urge him to go there and see for himself. 

Three years, a dozen destinations, one network and an entire show concept later, Bourdain arrived in Jerusalem. My efforts, clearly, were wildly persuasive.

But it was worth the wait. Bourdain reports like he eats — hungry for it all. And within the confines of a popular, half-hour travelogue, he devours the Holy Land with an open mind and an open mouth.

He starts at the Western Wall with the surprising acknowledgement that he is half-Jewish, despite a non-religious upbringing. At the Western Wall, the man who describes himself as “hostile to any sort of devotion” very publicly wrestles with his feelings as an Orthodox Jew wraps him with tefillin, and he prays, as a Jew, for the first time in his life. 

Leaving Jerusalem, Bourdain shuttles between Israelis and Palestinians, collecting contrasting narratives and the meals that go with them. 

He eats at the table of winemaker Amichai Luria, in the West Bank settlement of Eli, and peppers settlement leader Amiad Cohen with questions about their Palestinian neighbors. 

When he asks why the settlers don’t paint over anti-Arab graffiti sprayed by Jewish vandals, Cohen is momentarily at a loss for words, like maybe he was just expecting Rachael Ray.

He visits Al Rowwad Theatre in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, and just as pointedly asks theater director Abed Abusrour why Palestinians glorify hijackers and suicide bombers. After some equivocation, Abed says that despite the propaganda, young Palestinians actually idolize Mohammed Assaf, the Gazan winner of the singing competition “Arab Idol.”

Just outside of Jerusalem, in the village of Ein Rafa, Bourdain eats at Majda, an idyllic  restaurant run by husband-and-wife team Michal Baranes, an Israeli Jew, and Yakub Barhum, a Palestinian Muslim. They serve Bourdain fried zucchini in goat yogurt and okra with roasted tomato, onion and mint, and Bourdain allows himself to fantasize, for a second, that a divided land could actually come together over food. 

Then, reality: In Gaza, he eats a local delicacy of charred young watermelon with soggy bread — he does a terrible job of feigning delight — and hears the bitterness of old men displaced from their homes in 1948.

Just on the other side of the Gaza border, Bourdain visits Natan Galkowicz, owner of Mides Brazilian Restaurant in the Negev kibbutz Bror Hayil. Galkowicz’s daughter was killed in 2005 by a Hamas mortar.

“I know that my daughter was killed for no reason, and I know that people on the other side have been killed for no reason,” Galkowicz tells Bourdain. “Bottom line is, let’s stop with the suffering.”

Look, it’s not a 13-hour PBS documentary. But this is the way most people come to understand Israel: not through PR, or via professors, but through what’s popular — what’s on television. 

That didn’t stop the pro-Israel watchdog group CAMERA from nitpicking it apart. “Bourdain felt compelled to play to the perceived political orientation and pro-Palestinian sympathies of his audience,” the organization posted on its Web site, citing exactly zero statistics to support its own assumptions about his audience.

But given the limitations of the medium, Bourdain did the right thing. He gathered narratives, tested them against one another and against his own sense of what’s right and wrong. He sat down at tables and let people tell their stories. And only after he had listened, and eaten, with all of them — Israeli and Palestinian — did he venture a conclusion: 

“One can be forgiven for thinking,” he says, “when you see how similar they are, the two people, both of whom cook with pride, eat with passion, love their kids, love the land in which they live or the land they dream of returning to … that they might someday, somehow figure out how to live with each other. But that would be very mushy thinking indeed. Those things in the end probably don’t count for much at all.”

If only the high priests of certainty on all sides would be as willing as Bourdain to sit and hear competing narratives. They might learn something — and get a good meal, too.

Rob Eshman is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. E-mail him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Twitter @foodaism.

Anthony Bourdain (Finally) Goes to Israel

by

This week I columnized about Anthony Bourdain's visit to Israel, which aired as an episode of his “Parts Unknown” series on CNN.

Two years ago I wrote a column in the Jewish Journal urging Bourdain, the most articulate of all the food personalities on TV, to include Israel as part of his then-popular show, “No Reservations.”

I began the piece with some heartfelt buttering up:

Television is littered with lousy food shows. I know I risk sounding like some grumpy old coot wondering whatever happened to Jack Paar, but I do wonder what the spirit of the great Julia Child would make of the utter mediocrity, the sheer lack of aspiration, the game show approach and personality-driven fluff that has become the norm in food TV.

Thank God for Anthony Bourdain.

Then I made my ask:

One place Bourdain hasn’t been in the Middle East since 2006, or ever, is Israel. He did an episode in Dubai, in which he focused on the plight of the maltreated, deracinated imported laborers, and in Saudi Arabia, where he humanized a culture that exists mostly in monochromatic stereotype, while falling short of giving it a ringing endorsement.

But why not Israel? The comments section of Bourdain-related blogs is peppered with unanswered pleas for an Israel episode.

The country has undergone a food revolution; it is, and has long been, at the crossroads of Middle Eastern cuisine. Israel is home to great chefs, innovative producers, and there’s no lack of moving stories. If you want to examine how food and culture interact, Israel is one of the world’s perfect laboratories.

I assumed Bourdain was keeping his distance out of pique. With a bit of bad luck, he could have been killed in 2006 courtesy of the Israelis. I e-mailed Diane Schutz, the show’s producer,  at Zero Point Zero Productions and asked flat out, “Will Tony go to Israel?”

I expected no answer. But very quickly, by return e-mail, came a yes. Yes, she e-mailed me, it is something they are very much interested in. Not this season, which is in the can, but soon.

Now that will be a food show. Stay tuned.

We (me, our Web Team) launched a Facebook page, “Send Anthony Bourdain to Israel.”  It got a full TWO HUNDRED “Likes.”  Clearly I had tapped into the gestalt.

That was over two years ago.  But finally– with a different show, different network, different approach– Bourdain went.  

And when he returned, he got slammed.  

The watchdog organization CAMERA accused him of pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda. The Forward newspaper– 180 degrees the opposite of CAMERA–  called the trip a “big disappointment.”  

“He barely scratches the surface and spends scant time discussing food with Ottolenghi, who is arguably the most significant Israeli chef in the world,” writes Devra Ferst.

Ha'aretz enumarates all the restaurants he should have gone to but didn't.  But the writer misunderstands what this particular series is about– not restaurants and food per se, but people and their predicaments, with food as a lens.  

To be fair, Bourdain scored a few more points with Palestinians.   At the Daily Beast,, comedian, foodie and all-around remarkable person Maysoon Zayid gushes over his humanizing of Gazans– and notes that for her, he also went a way toward humanizing settlers.

And at the blog Barefoot in Ramallah, Bourdain gets a backhanded not bad, though they call the program “a little odd and simplistic.”  

So, welcome to Israel Tony– where as you noted at the outset of your show, you are bound to upset everyone.  And welcome to the Jewish people, Tony, where pretty much the same holds true.

My bottom line take on the show is this:

…given the limitations of the medium, Bourdain did the right thing. He gathered narratives, tested them against one another and against his own sense of what’s right and wrong. He sat down at tables and let people tell their stories. And only after he had listened, and eaten, with all of them — Israeli and Palestinian — did he venture a conclusion…

Like I said in my piece (the whole thing's below), it was worth the wait.  I'm thinking Bourdain appreciated my sentiments, since he Tweeted the column.

The question is, when is he going back?

Parts Unknown

by Rob Eshman

If you like food and you like Israel, this past week’s episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” was a win-win.

And I say that despite the criticism Bourdain has received from the people who profess to love Israel. To them, he presented a biased, pro-Palestinian screed disguised as a food-intensive travelogue.

To me, he showed exactly how smart, curious people should engage a complex country — and how Israelis and Palestinians benefit from that approach.

To food lovers, Bourdain is a star. He wrote the best-selling memoir of life as a professional chef, “Kitchen Confidential,” then took his biting insights on the road, first in the Travel Channel series “No Reservations,” and now for CNN. He travels the world reporting his perceptions of people and their predicaments, always using food as the way into their lives.

His first experience with Israel wasn’t pleasant: Bourdain was filming in Beirut in 2006 when the Second Lebanon War broke out, and he found himself at the wrong end of Israeli rockets.

I wondered in a column if that experience cooled Bourdain to the idea of visiting Israel, despite the fact that the country has undergone a food revolution. I even started a Facebook page to get fans to urge him to go there and see for himself.

Three years, a dozen destinations, one network and an entire show concept later, Bourdain arrived in Jerusalem. My efforts, clearly, were wildly persuasive.

But it was worth the wait. Bourdain reports like he eats — hungry for it all. And within the confines of a popular, half-hour travelogue, he devours the Holy Land with an open mind and an open mouth.

He starts at the Western Wall with the surprising acknowledgement that he is half-Jewish, despite a non-religious upbringing. At the Western Wall, the man who describes himself as “hostile to any sort of devotion” very publicly wrestles with his feelings as an Orthodox Jew wraps him with tefillin, and he prays, as a Jew, for the first time in his life.

Leaving Jerusalem, Bourdain shuttles between Israelis and Palestinians, collecting contrasting narratives and the meals that go with them.

He eats at the table of winemaker Amichai Luria, in the West Bank settlement of Eli, and peppers settlement leader Amiad Cohen with questions about their Palestinian neighbors.

When he asks why the settlers don’t paint over anti-Arab graffiti sprayed by Jewish vandals, Cohen is momentarily at a loss for words, like maybe he was just expecting Rachael Ray.

He visits Al Rowwad Theatre in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, and just as pointedly asks theater director Abed Abusrour why Palestinians glorify hijackers and suicide bombers. After some equivocation, Abed says that despite the propaganda, young Palestinians actually idolize Mohammed Assaf, the Gazan winner of the singing competition “Arab Idol.”

Just outside of Jerusalem, in the village of Ein Rafa, Bourdain eats at Majda, an idyllic vegetarian restaurant run by husband-and-wife team Michal Baranes, an Israeli Jew, and Yakub Barhum, a Palestinian Muslim. They serve Bourdain fried zucchini in goat yogurt and okra with roasted tomato, onion and mint, and Bourdain allows himself to fantasize, for a second, that a divided land could actually come together over food.

Then, reality: In Gaza, he eats a local delicacy of charred young watermelon with soggy bread — he does a terrible job of feigning delight — and hears the bitterness of old men displaced from their homes in 1948.

Just on the other side of the Gaza border, Bourdain visits Natan Galkowicz, owner of Mides Brazilian Restaurant in the Negev kibbutz Bror Hayil. Galkowicz’s daughter was killed in 2005 by a Hamas mortar.

“I know that my daughter was killed for no reason, and I know that people on the other side have been killed for no reason,” Galkowicz tells Bourdain. “Bottom line is, let’s stop with the suffering.”

Look, it’s not a 13-hour PBS documentary. But this is the way most people come to understand Israel: not through PR, or via professors, but through what’s popular — what’s on television.

That didn’t stop the pro-Israel watchdog group CAMERA from nitpicking it apart. “Bourdain felt compelled to play to the perceived political orientation and pro-Palestinian sympathies of his audience,” the organization posted on its Web site, citing exactly zero statistics to support its own assumptions about his audience.

But given the limitations of the medium, Bourdain did the right thing. He gathered narratives, tested them against one another and against his own sense of what’s right and wrong. He sat down at tables and let people tell their stories. And only after he had listened, and eaten, with all of them — Israeli and Palestinian — did he venture a conclusion:

“One can be forgiven for thinking,” he says, “when you see how similar they are, the two people, both of whom cook with pride, eat with passion, love their kids, love the land in which they live or the land they dream of returning to … that they might someday, somehow figure out how to live with each other. But that would be very mushy thinking indeed. Those things in the end probably don’t count for much at all.”

If only the high priests of certainty on all sides would be as willing as Bourdain to sit and hear competing narratives. They might learn something — and get a good meal, too.