File under the good news heading: According to this article in Crains New York Business (I read it online - as in standing on line for my take out lunch. It beat reading about Jenna Bush’s wedding…),

New York City is one of the largest players in the burgeoning green restaurant industry. According to Boston-based non-profit Green Restaurant Association, 25% of all American restaurants that it has certified as “green” are in NYC! The article also mentions the specific efforts of Tavern on the Green, who are nervous about not being up to sustainable-snuff when ownership of the site reverts to the Parks & Rec dept., and New York’s first certified organic restaurant, Gusto Grilled Organics. Now New Yorkers can have their cake and eat it, too.

New Yorkers visiting a certain patch of real estate in the East 20s known affectionately as Curry Hill know the secrets of kosher vegetarian Indian food - in fact, you can hardly throw a dosa without hitting Madras Mahal, Chennai Garden, or another Indian restaurant serving hecshered, meat-free fare.

Now, Israeli-born, vegetarian actress Natalie Portman will star in Mira Nair’s new movie, “Kosher Vegetarian” - exploring the interfaith romance between a Gujarati guy (actor, Ifran Khan) and Jewish girl (Portman).

Like Nair’s last movie (The Namesake), the love between these two characters will undoubtedly be fraught with disapproving parents and inter-cultural conflict. But at very least, the couple will know where to eat.

Last summer, the British rock band Radiohead made waves by selling their new album, In Rainbows, on a pay what you can basis.

Now, a vegetarian restauranteur is taking this model to the food world, selling meat-free, globally-inspired cuisine to customers - for whatever they think is “fair” - at his non-profit eatery, Lentil as Anything, and a local college cafe.

Some customers are completely thrown by the concept, and continue to ask for prices at the counter, but others see it as a chance to give back to their community. Owner Shanaka Fernando said the most a customer ever paid for a lentil burger was $50. “There must have been something in it that I didn’t see,” he said.

What do you think - is this an inspired idea, or totally nuts? I’m not sure yet, but I do already have a name in mind for the potential kosher, vegetarian spinoff: Abraham’s Tent.

Read the full article about the restaurant and school eatery here.

This past weekend, Hazon had the wonderful fortune of having Sharon Lebewohl - daughter of Abe Lebewohl who founded the (closed, but soon to re-open) 2nd Avenue Deli in New York City - attend The Food Conference. When I asked her how the plans for reopening were going, she told me that she was not working on the project…turns out, her 25-year old cousin, Jeremy is charged with task of reinvigorating one of New York’s most beloved delis. The interview with Jeremy below was originally published in New York Magazine.

You Can Take the Deli out of Second Avenue
New York Magazine
By Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite

It seemed like the whole city went into mourning when the deli closed. What made it so special?
You have other places in Manhattan that have good deli cases. But our kitchen—and I say this very confidently—nobody can touch. I won’t take away the counters from them, where you can get a good sandwich. But there aren’t that many places where you can get good soup. We have chicken fricassée, goulash, all these things that come from the kitchen. There’s not a single deli in Manhattan that can compare.

Read more »

I was just in Los Angeles and saw a bus stop sign exclaiming in huge letters “Mazel Tov on YOUR kosher Subway”. Ironically, I checked my email shortly after the sighting and before I had time to digest the gist of the message I saw another kosher Subway had just opened in New York.  

Someone hold me, I’m scared!

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I’ve been visiting New York City for over a week, sadly because my 97-year-old grandfather has been in the hospital. And in this time, I’ve eaten almost every meal out. Not by choice, necessarily, but when you’re getting together with friends or relatives in the evenings, going out to a meal is the easiest thing to do.

We have already pretty much said goodbye to tomatoes in California, and basil as well. But when we went to a quite good Italian place near my dad’s apartment on the Upper West Side the other night, I couldn’t believe there was a caprese salad, without basil, on the antipasto table.

While the brussel sprouts and mushrooms and grilled endive and marinated carrots and olives all looked delicious, the tomato slices were an embarressment. Why were they even on the table, I wondered. They were so pale, they didn’t even look like tomatoes, and I could tell they were hard as a rock. Why didn’t they just do without a caprese salad? Read more »

Laura Frankel is not your typical kosher chef. For those of who have been reading her recent posts, she has little tolerance for fake foods and refuses to kowtow to clients who demand kosher versions of otherwise unkosher food. I recently had the opportunity to sit and chat with her about her thoughts on food and the nature of food in Jewish society.

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Chef Peter Berley will share the love, and his skills, at the JCC in Manhattan on Wed, Oct 10 at a Hazon co-sponsored cooking demonstration. The blurb from the JCC says:

Join us for an exceptional guest chef demonstration with Chef Peter Berley, author of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen (winner of both The IACP Cookbook Award and the James Beard Award) and the newly released Fresh Food Fast, which offers
mouthwatering recipes that are easy to make and designed to satisfy all kinds of appetites. Enjoy an interactive cooking demonstration while you sample flavorful, sophisticated fare including toasted millet pilaf, savory kale with cremini mushrooms, lemon-thyme roast chicken, lemon-rosemary tofu, and vegan spice cake with extra virgin olive oil. Co-sponsored by Hazon.

Wed, Oct 10
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
$55.00 - Member
$65.00 - Non-Member

Your task at hand is fun and four-fold:

1. Register for the class at www.jcckitchen.org or by calling the JCC at 646.505.5708

2. Read The Jew & The Carrot review of Berley’s book The Flexitarian Table by R. Avi Finegold

3. Purchase The Flexitarian Table by clicking the book icon under the “Books we Love” section on this blog (see the left bar)

4. Check out Berley’s new “flexitarian” restaurant, Broadway East, opening October 15 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Get out your sustainable, local, affordable healthy food calendars, folks….

Because Farm Aid has released its lineup of HOMEGROWN Happenings surrounding Sun Sept 9th’s Farm Aid Concert on Randall’s Island in NY. The events, in partnership with many other local food and agriculture organizations, include a festival at Union Square from 10-4 on Sept 8th, and a week of farmfresh menu options at several NYC restaurants.

While the Farm Aid concert, for which tickets are still available, is the real peak of the homegrown happenings, don’t think it’s all over when the leaves drop from the trees- the festival will be culmniating with the theatrical debut of KING CORN, an amazing documentary about two twenty-somethings from Boston who decide to drive to Iowa and grow 1 acre of corn for 1 year, looking at the complexities of our food system in a nuanced and witty manner all the while their crop is growing. The film screening opens at Cinema Village on October 7 and runs for nearly 2 months.

Full Farm Aid NYC Calendar available here.

The New York Times reported this week that New York City’s oldest diner, Moondance, is moving…to Wyoming.  While property values skyrocket throughout the five boroughs, La Barge, Wyoming residents, Cheryl and Vince Pierce, “stole” Moondance for a tag-sale rate of $7500.  The diner, which features many of its original furnishings, will travel across the country on the back of a flat bed truck, before settling in its new home.  That’s one less restaurant for New York City, and one (total) restaurant for La Barge.

The whole situation is sadly fitting.  With Starbucks on every corner and $25 omelettes on brunch menus, Manhattan is no longer the kind of place for a place like Moondance.  In last week’s parsha, Eikev, Moses lies on his deathbed as the Jewish people are about to cross into the land of milk and honey they’ve been wandering towards for forty years.  He commands them to beware and avoid the belief that ”my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth,” - in other words, to remain humble despite their new plentiful existence.   

Hopefully, as Moondance makes its own journey towards a new home, New York - a city made beautiful by quirky diners and drab by each Frappucino - can take Moses’ message to heart. 

Read the article here.

Along with 2nd Avenue Deli in New York and Rascal House in Miami Beach, Ben’s Deli of Montreal has sadly been added to the list of dying delis in North America. Ben’s opened nearly 100 years ago on the famous Montreal stretch, “the Main,” (aka Blvd. St. Laurent/St. Lawrence), and was one of the first restaurants to offer the city’s now famous smoked meat sandwiches. Most agree quality declined in the past decade, but Ben’s was a favorite among locals, tourists, and celebrities alike. Famous politicians were known to frequent the deli, including our charismatic Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and current Quebec Premier, Jean Charest, who, I am told, enjoyed Ben’s matzoh ball soup on at least one occasion. Although I’ve always preferred Schwartz’s or Snowdon Deli (and Lester’s might soon be added to my list), it is sad to see Ben’s go.

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Nobody can teach the secrets to making a great pie (or pasta sauce, challah or soup) like your grandma (or uncle, mom, friend…) can. By watching their hands as they knead the dough or add a little more salt to the pan, you learn valuable lessons that a recipe alone cannot teach.

The makers of Real Meals TV have created a useful database of instructional videos that take viewers step-by-step through various recipes. Right before Passover, Jcarrot linked to their matzah ball segment. But I recently found another segment that I thought was worth sharing…

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This isn’t exactly a brand-new concept, but the NYTIMES 05.25.07 feature on “Veggie Mobiles” traveling through food deserts seems like an exciting, albeit temporary and non-systemic, solution.

I’ve recently had a number of conversations about the role of the ice cream man in childhood. Despite the fact that I was privileged to grow up on a street that the ice cream truck did frequent daily, my “health nut” mother relegated actual purchases from the truck to highly rare novelties. Therefore, while I know that the concept of a vehicle driving around neighborhoods selling food isn’t exactly a comprehensive or sustainable solution to anything, I definitely see potential for “veggie mobiles” around the country, in lieu of Mr. Softee’s monopoly.

Perhaps this hasn’t been tried before, because of the common misconception that kids only like unhealthy foods, which was shattered by David Kamp’s article in Wednesday’s NYTimes Dining Section about the horrors of traditional children’s menus and a new movement towards serving children real food instead of the dreaded “fingers.” Like Kamp, I was usually given smaller portions of what everyone else was eating, and didn’t have a problem with this. In fact, with regard to exciting grown-up restaurant foods, I was always told that “my eyes were bigger than my stomach.” In addition to the more innovative children’s menus, hopefully more restaurants will follow the trend of offering half portions of regular menu items, an option I have always appreciated.

I just finished reading this article in today’s Chronicle, and immediately had to post it. What a great idea to get urban kids interested not only in sustainable agriculture, but how they should be feeding themselves. Check it out.