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The Kosher Food and Wine Experience 2011:
A Savory Report
By
Judah S. Harris
published
March 2011
Sometimes it’s
better to eat alone, but the evening of Tuesday,
February 22, wasn’t
one of those times. That
night
was
a
good
time
to
pull
away
from
the
kitchen
table and head over to The Kosher Food and
Wine Experience 2011, which was
in
full swing for a few hours at Pier
60, the popular special events venue at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers.
If you weren’t one
of the 2000 who attended the completely sold out
event (there
were
many
begging
for
last-minute
tickets),
imagine
a
large
room
offering
a concentrated bouquet of new tastes, along with
traditional Jewish fare served up in
novel (and sometimes wild)
configurations. Imagine an almost over-abundance of wines - 300 of them
- from the U.S., Israel, France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, and (heading
as far south as reasonably possible) Australia and New Zealand. The
well-publicized and well-attended event offered testimony
that
the
kosher wine market continues to grow, and
there were other alcoholic
drinks too, but with tastings reserved for press and trade only. The
credentialed had an extra couple of hours to explore KFWE before the
public arrived and the room got crowded.
(Membership
has
its
privileges,
but
with
it
comes
the
responsibility
of
writing
a
2800
word
article.)
This is the fifth year that Royal Wine Corporation has hosted the gala
event. Initially a showcase exclusively for beverages, last year they
added food to the menu and moved to Chelsea Piers, and this year
invited a number of celebrated chefs from the world of kosher cooking
to be present, though a good guess suggests that many tasters in the
crowd could probably maneuver deftly around any kitchen. But you
wouldn’t be able to easily identify the most talented amongst the
masses, and the crowd, a well dressed one, had left any aprons and
culinary tools at home, and were now managing to balance plates, forks
and glasses as they made their way from table to table, food on one
side of the hall, wines concentrated on the other.
If the Kosher Food and Wine Experience name itself wasn’t a clear
enough indication, you have to know it’s a Jewish event when there’s cholent being
served. For the $100 admission ticket to KFWE, you got to
taste three types, courtesy of Got Cholent, Inc. Founded by Ari White,
a Yeshiva University grad who spent five years in corporate, his
company offers 16 varieties of cholent
on their catering menu. I tried
some of each that they’d brought from their Westchester hub to share at
KFWE: Texas Cholent (they smoke their own meat and then add Dr.
Pepper), Moroccan Dafina, and Bubby’s Polish Cholent, which resembles
what most of us are used to, unless you’re from Texas or of Sephardic
background.
If cholent
is a
meal in itself (though I had only a
few small
portions), it was now time for dessert. I headed a couple exhibit
tables away to My Most Favorite Food, the now Upper West Side
establishment that had to leave their dairy recipes at home given the
meat-or-pareve event regulations, but nevertheless had an attractive
array of neatly arranged colorful desserts on display. I prefer to
involve more pronounced coloring in my clothing and furniture choices
(and photographs too), rather than atop my cakes and cookies, so I
grabbed a brownie bite from the tray, then moved on to the white cone
shaped meringue sweets. I had two of them, eyed but didn’t try the
cinnamon sticks in a jar, and slid only a matter of feet to the famed
tea manufacturer from Israel (though founded in Russia in 1849),
Wissotzky. You’ve seen their name on delicate wooden boxes, and now
there were choices to be made: “Do you want something fruity or would
you like to try something new?” asked Natale Goldberg from her side of
the table. I went with new, and a moment later was sipping… chocolate
tea.
Surveying the other nearby options, I walked over to say hi to the
folks at Noi Due, an Upper West Side Italian-themed dairy café
on 69th St, which was serving up tastes of coffee (they grind their
own), and biscotti, (not their own). I didn’t accept the offer for
coffee, explaining matter-of-factly that I’ve never drunk a cup in my
life. Not one. Ever. I’m not sure if I’m justified in my longstanding
pride of that fact, but most people find it rather novel. If you can’t
get to Noi Due today or tomorrow, at least visit their website and
enjoy the background music (www.noiduecafe.com).
Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a gondola, and pretend yourself
lost in Venice. The
restaurant name, if you’re wondering, as I was, means something along
the lines of “the two of us.”
The wineries (which I promise we’ll get to) had the longest trips to
the event, but Robert and Valerie Gropper, a husband and wife team
whose lives, to a great degree, revolve around salsa, and have since
1993, drove down from Poughkeepsie, a couple hours to Manhattan. Their
company, My Brother Bobby’s Salsa, was offering tastes of a
number
or
varieties,
including
their
bruschetta,
and
in
front
of
the
serving
bowls were displayed the ingredients, such as green and red
peppers,
onions, jalapeno, and tomatoes. I asked Valerie about the difference
between chutney and salsa - “Chutney is cooked, this
is
fresh”
-
and
how
much
they
produce
in
their
commissary.
Summer is big time for them, barbecue
and
picnic
season,
so
they
make
about 2000 pounds of the
original red salsa recipe for the meat eating crowds, but I’m sure tofu
fans can find ample use too.
Jackie Grossman, a New York City tax lawyer, approached the Gropper’s
table and while she was enjoying some samples, I asked her what
prompted her to attend KFWE? “My husband fancies himself a wine
connoisseur, and I accompany him,” she told me. I’m sure that’s true,
but he wasn’t in site, and obviously on the other side of the room,
while Jackie remained – at least for now - enjoying the options in the
restaurant and catering section. The Gropper table was a good stop,
since she likes to make salads, likes Mexican foods, and likes
avocadoes, which I think is the only way to go, though some elementary
school kids I’ve met might not agree.
The table to the left of My Brother Bobby’s was a place to find the
flavors of India, and there I met Pearl and Avi Weisel learning more
about Dakshin, a glatt kosher Indian bistro on the East Side of
Manhattan. New York has had various emanations of kosher Indian food
for many years, but Dakshin and Shalom Bombay, located about 20 blocks
south, are two relatively new establishments offering meat fare, as
opposed to vegetarian, and with the enhancement of more mainstream
kosher supervision (head to Stamford, CT and you can find a dairy
option supervised by the local Vaad).
Sanjay Bhatnagar, the proprieter of Dakshin, was standing behind the
table serving Lasoni Mushrooms with Mint Sauce. Pearl is a mushroom fan
and enjoys the dish; her husband Avi tries just the mint sauce. They
both got their tickets to KFWE a month before the event. Sanjay’s
college-aged son told me a bit about his dad’s experience, as he placed
some Shami Kebab, a combination of lamb, cilantro, ginger, and garlic,
on a plate for me to taste. This is his father’s first kosher eatery,
but he’s been in the food industry for 27 years, initially in India and
then here in the US.
Mushroom themed dishes were also available one table away, where Jeff
Nathan from Abigael’s was serving Wild Mushroom Polenta, his recipe of
wild mushrooms, herbs and white truffle oil enhancing a corn meal base.
Small plastic cups of pasta with miso sauce were another giveaway, and
if you’re searching for other interesting combinations of his, pick up
a copy of his book, Adventures in
Jewish Cooking.
Exhibitor staff at many food tables could be seen working hard, though
not feverishly, to feed the crowds, and I observed for a few moments
the servers at Prime KO (a Japanese steak house, and part of the Prime
Hospitality Group, which also includes The Prime Grill and Solo),
moving in automated fashion, scooping spicy tuna onto crispy rice.
Shunning raw fish, I just watched, and left it at that. But Elyce and
Steve Smedresman from Fairlawn, NJ, didn’t. “We’ve had three,” they
admitted proudly. Their first time at KFWE, they told me they’d found
places exhibiting that they wanted to now visit on their own turf,
revealing that Shalom Bombay was one of them.
Slender but tall cocktail tables were set up around the room, and at
one of them, Leah Goldsmith from Queens,
who’d
come
“with
a
writer
friend,”
was
eating
lamb
and
potato kugel from Pomegranate, the gourmet
Brooklyn supermarket that has generated some
excitement, not just for
their shopping experience (and a parking lot – most essential!), but
also for their persistent and forceful advertising campaigns that
have
appeared
in
local
Jewish
media
since,
and
prior
to,
their inception.
Chezkie Klein,
who’s known by friends (and I got the sense, by just
about everybody) as CK, gave me a quick tour of
the booth, by far the
largest occupier of floor space at KFWE. He’s manager of prepared foods
and has only been at Pomegranate for a few months. Prior to that,
for
10
years,
he
owned
and
managed
the
Plaza
Dining
restaurant at The
Avenue Plaza Hotel in Boro Park.
CK is good at describing food (“the Honey
Mustard
Corn
Beef melts in
your mouth”), resourceful (he wants me to meet the other folks from the
store, including the Marketing Director), and can offer valuable advice
– the kind that even if you know it you might still need professional
assurances about (“horseradish goes with many dishes and recipes”). A
long table of theirs was devoted to dips. I gave the server my choices
and she placed a selection of purple eggplant dip, tehina, and
kalamat
olive tapenade on crackers (I mistakenly took some of the saltier ones,
which overwhelmed the dips).
As I headed finally to the wine section of the event, I met up with a
friend and asked her what wines she had tried. “The women are all crazy
about Capcanes,” she said, showing me the program guide. A Spanish
winery from the Montsant region, an area that is home to 50 wineries,
and vineyards occupying about 5000 acres of land (which produce 22
million pounds of grapes a year), Capcanes was pouring three wines that
evening and she had tasted and liked the new Flor del Flor 2007 ($80 in
stores), which she described as “sweet, but not too heavy.” A
not-exclusively-kosher winery, Capcanes’ kosher yearly allotment of
16,000 bottles is less than 5 percent of their total production. This
winery – like many wineries – has a story. It was back in 1995 that the
Barcelona Jewish community approached Capcanes to create kosher wines,
forcing a modernization of the winery’s equipment, which helped them
evolve throughout their product line away from their bulk wine business
model.
Hagafen Cellers of Napa Valley, CA had brought eight wines to KFWE. I
remember them from the earlier years. The company was founded in 1979
and I used to receive their occasional newsletters in the ‘80s, replete
with product information, purchase-by-the-case offers… but my eyes
mostly caught the recipes, and Napa Valley, as I discovered, offered
landscapes that are a photographer’s dream. I even had called Hagefen’s
Winemaker, Ernie Weir, way back then, to see if they wanted a photo
shoot, though I never made it out to the region.
Now, a couple
decades later at the Hagafen table, I tasted their
Hagafen Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2007, which retails for $45,
with chocolate, black fruits flavors… but then tried one of the others,
a Zinfandel (2006), also dry but with a lighter taste compared to the
Cabernet, and which I preferred. Hagafen has won critical acclaim and
can even be found as an import on store shelves in Israel, which
probably says something, since Israel doesn’t lack wine options.
Kibbutz Tzuba, 20 minutes from Jerusalem, 40 minutes
from
Tel
Aviv,
has
a
winery
that
bears
its
name,
and many ancient
temple-period wine
presses that can be seen on its grounds. At their table, Eiton Green,
the manager of the winery, as well as kibbutz secretary, explained to
me that, in contrast to most other Israeli wineries, they cultivate and
grow their own grapes – 15 different varieties. “Twenty percent we
keep,” and the rest are sold to other Israeli wineries, he said.
Tzuba’s winery is in existence six years and presently produces 12
different types of wine, including Metsuda Reserve 2006, which was
proudly on display, and which is made with predominately Cabernet
Sauvignon grapes and aged for 24 months in French Oak wine barrels. The
winemaker at Tzuba is a South African oleh,
Paul
Dubb,
who helped
establish the kibbutz vineyards in the mid-90s, but
whose “passion for
wine” started when he was child and made kiddush wine in South Africa
together with his dad.
At 9:30pm, as the blinking room lights indicated that the event was in
fact ending, I grabbed a few minutes with Jeff Morgan from Covenant
Wines. Jeff has written amply about wine and food (including hundreds
of articles for the glossy magazine Wine
Spectator, sister publication
to Cigar Aficionado) and
taught in educational environments. This
kosher California winery has been around for eight years, and was
prompted or provoked by a Jewish, though non-observant colleague of
Jeff’s, Leslie Rudd, a highly respected wine maker, business leader and
philanthropist, and now backer of the Covenant brand, who challenged
him to make a “kosher wine that was good.”
Jeff thought he could do it. He knew he needed good grapes and Sabbath
observing employees. He called Nathan Herzog – “I need your
crew,” he told the Royal Wine executive. From 2003-2007 they took their
grapes down south to the Herzog Winery in Oxnard, a city in Ventura
County, CA, and there they made their wine. Since that period of time,
Covenant’s winemaking has taken place in Napa Valley, where they grow
the grapes. The company has a limited run of only 2000 cases a year,
and only brings in extra crew for harvest time. Pictures that show
their 2010 harvest, as well as the two previous years, can be viewed at
their website (www.covenantwines.com).
If the abundance and variety of kosher wines has enhanced the kosher
dining experience, it’s also created a certain amount of confusion or
uncertainty about the right approach to choosing wines, and how exactly
to meld them with food dishes. Gary Landsman, a wine “commentator”
(www.winetastingguy.com)
who
handles marketing and PR for Royal Wine
Corporation and who was instrumental in marketing KFWE 2011, suggests
that people make it more complicated than it really is.
Choose a wine you like, he advises in a recent article that appeared in
a February issue of Kosher Inspired,
a new Mishpacha Magazine
publication. If you like the wine, then it’s a good choice. If it’s
hard for you to swallow, then it’s not. As for pairing, “drink what
you’d like,” but pay attention to similar flavors – wines with citrus
flavors as a complement to salads or main dishes with citrus tastes, or
creamy toasted-bread flavored wines (such as Chardonnay) with foods
like pasta that embody some of the same. Heavier or big-bodied wines
(powerful aroma and flavor) work well with heavier food items (e.g., a
steak), but can overpower a grilled salmon, which would do best with
lighter wines such as a Pinot Noir, which is also recommended for
dishes where mushrooms provide the dominant flavor.
Whatever happened to Kedem Plum Royale, my favorite as a child? (We
always included that in our Pesach
wine order.) It’s still available at
about $4 to $5 a bottle, but Gary won’t allow me free reign.
Sweet wines, he advises, are great for dessert time. But exert caution
when serving outside those parameters. “These wines can make non-sweet
foods taste bitter.”
I guess it’s to be expected that The Kosher Food and Wine Experience
2011, even as it provided a showcase for new foods and new wines, could
easily remind some of the quite familiar. I overheard one person, at
one point in the evening, call it a “big kiddush.” I’m certain he was
not the lone attendee to use that reference during or after the event.
The similarities were obvious: crowds of people (sans the pushing), hot
cholent,
wine, cookies and cake, yet (given the alcoholic component of
the event) no kiddie table.
But really KFWE provided multiple opportunities: wine connoisseurs
could drink together and speak to each other in the language of wine
terminology, while the less initiated could taste food and drink and
learn a few things that they might now more easily incorporate into
their dining experience. If one evening wasn’t enough time to master
all, there’ll be another KFWE again next year (and some of the special
names in the wine and food industry that exhibited at this year’s event
to look forward to in the interim).
Judah S. Harris offers creative marketing
services for restaurants and boutique hotels. To learn more about
KFWE 2011, visit their website.
Judah S.
Harris is a photographer,
filmmaker, speaker and
writer. He
photographs family celebrations and a wide range
of corporate, organizational and editorial projects in the US, Israel
and other countries. Judah's photography has appeared in museum
exhibits, on the Op-Ed Pages of the NY Times, on the covers of more
than 40 novels, and in advertising all over the world. His work can be seen in
a frequent email newsletter that circulates to thousands of
readers who repeatedly praise the quality of Judah's photography and
writing. To learn more about Judah S. Harris, visit www.judahsharris.com/visit.
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