Jewish haimish cooking goes Tribeca

[AdinaA]

Kutsher's Tribeca takes gefilta fish upscale, way upscale, not kosher, just upscale. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/dining/kutshers-tribeca-to-bring-a-taste-of-the-catskills-to-manhattan.html

http://tribecacitizen.com/2011/05/11/the-menu-for-kutshers-tribeca/

Previous thread partly on taking Ashkenazi heritage cooking upscale http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/768972

[SoCal Mother]

The place will be glatt trefe. The first sandwich I saw on the menu was meat and cheese. Pretty tacky if you ask me.

[zsero]

Well, maybe that will warn people who might otherwise for some reason entertain the idea that the place is kosher.

BTW there's a place in Toronto that has a really Jewish name, "Haymishe Essen" or something like that, which is chazzer treif.

[SoCal Mother]

Well obviously in their "Heim" (home) they eat trefe...

[zsero]

Someone I know once (back in the 1960s) dated a member of a family which was a major name in kosher food manufacturing. I think he was either a Horowitz or a Margareten, but I'm not sure; at any rate it was a name everyone trusted. He invited her home for dinner one Friday night. All went well, until the pork chops came out; that was the end of the date and the end of the relationship.

Of course the family's business had a good hechsher, nothing untoward was happening there. But at home it was a different story.

[serenarobin]

A comment from one of the owners, posted here
http://tribecacitizen.com/2011/05/11/...
summarizes their philosophy regarding kashrut:

"Zach (Kutsher) did not want to be constrained in “modern Jewish bistro” by being strictly Kosher. There will be a GREAT many items on the menu for “all but the most Glatt” of Kosher guests. My years of demographic study and insight into all of the UJA/federation studies ratified what we had assumed to be true with regard to the small percentage of families who are kosher outside the home. It is a very slender percentage."

[DeisCane]

He's right about the second part (small percentage) but the first part (all but the most Glatt) is pretty silly sounding.

[joebenjamin]

Up to the early seventies there were still non-frum young people that kept kosher-in and out-today its frum and kosher -or nothing.Look at BUBBY's restaurant in Tribeca---I'm sure that there are numerous other examples especially out of town.If our own do not care just imagine what the corporate world's feelings are.Even Manischewitz does non kosher -they took over Cohen's which makes trief stuff too.Sara Lee advised their BESTS/SINAI/ WILNO customers to make the switch to their BEEF products!!!!!

[serenarobin]

Disappointing that it's not kosher.

[AdinaA]

A first-class restaurant would probably have trouble making it at Tribeca rents if it was closed every seventh day.

[DeisCane]

The kasha varniskhas bit is sad--what's wrong with groats?!--but the rest sounds neat.

[AdinaA]

True. Quinoa is pretty flavorless. I adore kasha and cannot imagine what they are thinking. I mean, if you want to server quinoa, serve quinoa - but don't call it kasha varnishkas.

[DeisCane]

Exactly. If you want to take it "upscale," get locally sourced, organic buckwheat. Replacing it with a grass seems to be misguided at best.