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.

One of the overarching ideas that govern her style of cooking is that Kosher is a way of life and rather than use kosher substitutes to allow people to enjoy otherwise unkosher dishes, she would prefer to work strictly within the bounds of a natural kosher ingredient palette and creatively work from there.

In her kosher, meat kitchen things such as margarine and soy milk are verboten. If you want to make chocolate chip cookies you better make them with real butter and wait to eat them in a dairy context. She said that it shocks her to know that there are Jews who have never eaten desserts such as cookies and brownies that had real butter in them. In essence she said, “Kosher is like breathing, once you have the rules, it becomes second nature.”

I asked her about her relationship with local farms and produce, and she echoed the sentiment of many chefs trained in post-Alice Waters America. Food that is grown locally, according to her has a “more human connection” and the sensory experiences can be enhanced. She related to me how wonderful it feels to cook with an apple that was picked that day and was still warm from the sun when she held it. In this sense she places herself squarely in the world of food as art rather than food as a global environmental philosophy. This is an important distinction and before all the environmentalists fill up the comments section I would argue that we really do need people who care about both sides of the equation.

Food philosophers like Michael Pollan are needed to bring the issues to light, while the food artists are the ones that create a universal sensory truth so that the individual can experience and understand on a visceral level that which the Philosopher presents. Nevertheless, there is a fair amount of philosophy in her thinking as well. Processed foods do not have much weight in Chef Laura’s world. What we eat should be made by a person and not a machine (well not entirely by a machine at least). According to her, “If it looks like it came from a factory then you should think twice.”

Chef Laura recently joined the team opening up the new Wolfgang Puck at Spertus Cafe as executive chef, bringing years of operating Kosher restaurants to the table. Kosher restaurants are unique in a number of ways and she was more than willing to elaborate on the vagaries of serving food to Kosher-keeping Jews.

Kosher restaurants are often limited by the fact that the protein on your plate is usually fixed and does not change with the seasons; this means that the real talent comes from making the produce and grains surrounding it the true centerpieces of the dish. In essence, what she is saying is that Jews want chicken and steak and her art comes from sneaking in the backdoor and wowing them with a wonderful pairing of an unusual grain and say, baby beets (though she said that no one really liked the baby beets, which is a pity).

This fact likely stems from the Talmudic dictum (echoed centuries later by Brillat-Savarin) that there is only true joy with meat and wine. Perhaps the new rallying cry of the conscious Jewish eater should be, “There is only true joy with seitan and local micro-greens.” As with the above, she refuses to serve steak with bearnaise sauce (inevitably made with non-butter substitutes), and apropos of that she made a truly profound statement: “I don’t care what prime grill does. Some animal died so you can eat it, and you want to slather chemicals all over it?”

Opening a Kosher Wolfgang Puck franchise is not without its own challenges though. Frankel does have room to create her own dishes but people do want to see some of the signature dishes that Puck is famous for.  Still, don’t look for any asiago in the stuffed chicken breast, or some of the more signature desserts. She seems to have enough culinary muscle to make sure that her “no fake food” rule remains true at the new Spertus establishment. If there will be a replacement for the cheese in the chicken it will likely not be a pseudo-dairy that melts like cheese but doest taste like it. Likewise with the desserts where Frankel has become a real Maestra of the Sorbet.

What might be of interest to the foodie trainspotters will be to see how she blends her Mediterranean influences with Puck’s Asian fusion. She hinted at some possibilities, mentioning that at the opening Gala, guests will see a main course flavored with ginger and pomegranate. (I will be sure to post a full report after sampling the finished menu.) The restaurant will be meat based, but Frankel is optimistic about this. She feels that the no-butter-milk-cheese, constraints of working in a meat kitchen force her to be more creative with her menus rather than having the full palette of base ingredients available to her to create more classic dishes.

In all, this is an exciting step in global Kosher cuisine, marking the first time a superstar chef has paired with a big name in the Kosher world to bring Jews world-class casual dining. Best of luck to a new JCarrot blogger and we look forward to her dispatches from Chicago; a ray of light in an otherwise kosher wasteland.

Chef Laura Frankel’s Website