What a difference a day makes! Last night My Most Favorite Lunch Companion and I had our annual dinner date (the UTJ dinner doesn’t count). We went to Darna, a Persian/Moroccan restaurant in Manhattan at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 89th Street on the Upper West Side. THIS is fine dining, folks!

I’m in love. With the FOOD, Rapp, with the FOOD! The appetizers were light and perfectly seasoned, the soup thick and hearty. The beef tajine melts in your mouth – and fortunately there was enough left over for me to take home for Shabbat dinner. MMFLC’s only quibble was with the chicken penne dish. It was described on the menu as being in a “roasted pepper sauce,” and the waiter claimed that there were jalapeno peppers in it, but it tasted like pesto to us. My only quibble was that the lighting was so dim that you couldn’t see what you were eating. OK, it’s romantic, I’ll admit that – although it would be even more so if they used something other than Shabbat candles on the tables! Otherwise, the ambiance is great, the food was great, the company was great… what more could you ask for? (Sorry, folks, we had neither the time nor the appetite for dessert; I’ll have to report on that another time.)

(DW)

Last night I had dinner with a bunch of relatives at Glatt a la Carte in Boro Park. This place is touted as one of the premier eating establishments in the neighborhood. If so, I feel sorry for Boro Parkers (?), because they really don’t know what they’re missing when it comes to fine dining.

First the good news. The ambiance of the place is pretty good – spacious and modern – but the piped-in “chasuna” music was a little off-putting, even though it was relatively quiet. As for the food – the portions of everything were more than adequate. Some of the food was good – the ribs were a big hit (one portion was enough for all 7 of us!), the liver was deemed good, and everyone liked the fries – both regular and sweet potato.

Now the not-so-good. This family likes “bassar” (my son says that’s different from “meat”, but I don’t know how) so most of us ordered some variety of steak. No matter how we wanted it done, everyone’s food came medium rare. The quality was variable as well. My son said his rib steak was tasty and juicy, while his wife’s was tough and tasteless. My Romanian tenderloin tasted fine, but it was so tough that I could barely cut it, much less chew it (should it be called toughloin?). As for the vegetables, they were a disaster. Green beans were so overcooked that they were no longer green; the grilled veggies were so overcooked that they were a soggy mess; and the tomatoes in the salad must have been frozen and then thawed, because they were soft and mushy.

Of course I’m saving the desserts for last. Skip the pareve ice cream, it’s not worth the calories. The brownies were pretty good. But the “chocolate chip souffle” – a chocolate chip cake filled with warm chocolate sauce – was to die for. I should have skipped the meal and just had that.

(DW)

Lite Harvest Foods, makers of the EnchantmentsTM brands of no trans fat, sugar free and low carb cookies, announced that they have received the KOF-K kosher certification and have added the KOF-K kosher symbol to their cookie packaging.

The company has this to say about itself:

Lite Harvest Foods? was created for one purpose: to bring tremendous flavor, quality, and innovation to the sugar-free, low carbohydrate cookie category.

Our mission is simple and after tasting our Enchantments cookies, you will agree that no other cookie will suffice. That’s because our gourmet, sugar-free, low carbohydrate cookies are made with the perfect blend of premium ingredients and baked to be the ultimate reward. Our cookies have changed the lives of people throughout the United States and Canada.

On the web, you can reach them at:
http://www.liteharvest.com/
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Sounds good to us. Let us know when you try them!
(RJR)

We seldom check out commercial web sites that promote a company’s products. Most of the time, we find them self-serving (DUH!) and not very good. We saw an ad promoting recipes using Birdseye veggies, and, frankly, the recipes looked pretty good!

www.birdseye.com is a great web site, and the recipes are pretty good. Uh, that is, once you get past all the recipes for ham and veggies. Many of the recipes work in a kosher kitchen, especially for dairy meals. Check it out!
(RJR)

This past shabbat, our local community Jewish newspaper had an ad from a whole lot of rabbis who wanted to assure us that glatt shechita is kosher shechita one hundred percent the way it’s supposed to be. This was the second ad we have seen in response to the PETA video.

We realized from the get-go that PETA had an agenda, and it was essentially to attack shechita. That agenda has only now started to become obvious to the public at large. But let’s look at the story from a different point of view. Let’s forget PETA and their lurid, doctored video.

What if all of those rabbis and agencies who have been so busy signing ads had a meeting and decided that they had to protect the reputation of kosher shechita? What if they decided that the needs of the community and protecting the community from attacks against shechita warranted a massive collusion? Maybe we are really being paranoid. Then again, maybe we are not!

There obviously was a problem at the Postville plant. As much as the OU insists that all was copacetic, they have hastened to add an extra person to the plant to make sure that all is done k’dat uchdin. Huh? If everything was so okay, why add another person?

They have assured us that occasionally an animal does not die right away from shechita. We can accept that. What is the statistical rate of incidence? How many cows, say out of a hundred, will get up and walk after shechita? Granted the PETA video is stilted, but it seems to show a fairly large number of animals that didn’t die quickly.

Many of us grew up in homes where there was no notion of glatt. Suddenly, we were told that the only truly kosher meat was glatt. As the cost of glatt got ever more expensive, the quality of the meat consistently went down. Today, outside of a few really good restaurants, it is almost impossible to get kosher prime beef. Nine dollars a pound for rib steak at the butcher store is an obscene amount of money. Roasts that regularly cost over $35 for a family of four for one meal are the rule and not the exception. But we paid, because how can you put a price tag on a mitzvah, ie, eating kosher?

When the Triangle K took over supervision of Hebrew National, they upgraded the shechita facilities and established all sorts of new rules for the shechita house as well as the deli plant. There were those in the Orthodox community who still pooh-pooh’ed HN. They looked down their nose at meat that was not glatt. We would do well to note that that non glatt meat has no scent of scandal attached to it. How ironic! If you want to buy meat that is kosher without a doubt, maybe you should buy HN meat. Sure, it’s not glatt, but, then again, it IS kosher!

What a strange world, indeed!
(RJR)