Duck leg confit served with white bean cassoulet. House-made lamb bacon. Mexican-inflected California cuisine. Not the offerings you would have expected at a kosher restaurant 20 years ago, perhaps not even a decade ago. But a handful of high end, innovative kosher restaurants, primarily in the gastronomic capitals of New York and California, have sprouted in the past decade, immutably changing the kosher dining landscape. And that change is driven by ba'alei teshuva.
As Chefs Become More Observant, Kosher Menus Go Gourmet
For Some, Cooking Kosher Is an Opportunity, Not a Drawback
By Devra Ferst • Forward
Duck leg confit served with white bean cassoulet. House-made lamb bacon. Mexican-inflected California cuisine. Not the offerings you would have expected at a kosher restaurant 20 years ago, perhaps not even a decade ago. But a handful of high end, innovative kosher restaurants, primarily in the gastronomic capitals of New York and California, have sprouted in the past decade, immutably changing the kosher dining landscape.
Much of this change has been propelled by baalei teshuvah chefs and diners, those who were raised in the religious world, left an observant life and returned, or those who became more observant later in life. “They’re driving the revolution” said Sue Fishkoff, author of “Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority.” “Look at the chefs and the winemakers and the cookbook writers… so many of them are baalei teshuvah. They’ve come from the world of non-kosher food; they know it, appreciate it and are bringing it into the world of kosher.”
This small band of chefs has led the way in kosher dining, with restaurants that rival their local non-kosher competition. Pardes and Basil in Brooklyn, The Kitchen Table in Silicon Valley, Mosaica in Northern New Jersey, Tierra Sur at the Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard, Calif., and Moise in Jerusalem are all either run by or were opened by American chefs who spent considerable amounts of time eating and/or cooking non-kosher food. There’s a “small amount of us who have seen the other side and who are bringing it to the kosher side,” said…