Traditional Kosher Products Appear Poised to Compete With ‘In’ Foods : Trends: The strictly prepared food is becoming increasingly popular with a larger number of non-Jewish consumers.

Can it be that kosher food has become trendy? Can traditional Jewish cooking that depended for oh-so-many years on brisket, blintzes and borscht really compete with the likes of such bona fide “in” cuisines as Southwest and Thai?

Sounds improbable, but the word from those who deal in kosher foods is a qualified yes.

Product variety and availability have exploded, kosher mavens note, gourmet kosher restaurants now serve top quality Continental, Oriental, Mexican, Indian and other non-traditional dishes, and upscale hotels are investing big money to compete for kosher catering dollars.

Even kosher wines, long-disdained by connoisseurs as far too sweet and syrupy, now compete with premium non-kosher wines. The 1986 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon produced by Gan Eden, a small, kosher winery located in Sebastopol, Calif., has just taken top honors in its category in Wine&Spirits; magazine’s 1989 American Wine Champion competition. The award is one of three-dozen medals won by the label over the past five years.

“The last decade has seen kosher go from relative obscurity tucked away in a corner of the market to the level where often more than one-third the products on a market’s shelves are kosher,” said Menachem Lubinsky, president of New York-based Lubicom, a leading kosher marketing firm.

However, only a small fraction of that amount--about $1.5 billion--is actually spent by Jews who follow their faith’s complex set of dietary laws known in Hebrew as kashrut, Lubinsky pointed out. “That’s an indication of how much the kosher market extends beyond observant Jews,” he said.

“It’s like sushi,” added Marvin Pearlman, president of A1 International Foods in Los Angeles, the largest kosher food distributor west of New York. “Non-Jews eat kosher food because they think it’s exotic.”

The Northeast, with its large Jewish population, is the nation’s prime kosher market. Southern California, however, has quietly slipped into second place in the kosher sweepstakes.

There are now nearly 40 kosher restaurants in Los Angeles scattered over the area from downtown to the west San Fernando Valley (these should not be confused with kosher-style restaurants, such as Canter’s on Fairfax Avenue).

One of Los Angeles’ better-known kosher restaurants is the Milky Way run by Steven Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, on West Pico Boulevard. Just down the street are China on Rye and Pepe Tam, which offer kosher Chinese and Mexican dishes.

Meanwhile, such upscale hotels as the Beverly Hilton and Century Plaza are finding that a larger proportion of their catering is kosher.

“Thirty-percent of our total catering business is kosher, and it goes up every year,” said Carlo Karim, food and beverage director at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which recently spent $600,000 to install a kosher kitchen complete with its own dish-washing area, refrigerators, ovens and food preparation tables.

At the Century Plaza Hotel, catering director Jim Ries said that as much as 50% of the hotel’s non-convention catering is now kosher and that “it has increased dramatically in recent years.”

“Eating kosher has become a fad in Los Angeles,” said Rabbi Aryeh Weiner, who keeps tab of the West Coast kosher scene for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, the largest of the many rabbinical watchdog groups that certify products as being kosher. “Because of that, kosher consumerism in Los Angeles is far ahead of anywhere else in the United States.”

Perhaps the strongest indication yet that Southern California is now big time in the kosher world came last weekend with the staging of the International Jewish Festival at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Previous festivals have been held the past few years in New York and Miami, but this was the first time the kosher foods expo was staged on the West Coast.

The festival, which ended Monday and drew more than 20,000 people, according to event organizers, featured more than 40 kosher food producers. Included were such food industry giants as Borden’s, Post Cereals and H.J. Heinz, which became the first national brand to cater to kosher consumers when it introduced canned, kosher vegetarian baked beans in the mid-1930s.

Other booths touted kosher restaurants and caterers and one firm that builds kosher kitchens complete with three sinks to insure that meat, dairy and neutral, or parve, foods do not unintentionally come in contact with each other in violation of kosher guidelines.

Kosher regulations, which are based on biblical passages and later rabbinical interpretations, are extremely complex. A quick rule-of-thumb to remember is no pork, shellfish or the mixing of dairy and meat no matter how minute the quantity. Also, to be kosher, fish must have scales and wine or grape juice must come from Jewish sources.

A visit to the convention center provided a convincing lesson into the changing nature of kosher foods. Goat cheese, frozen pizza, Middle Eastern spicy salads, Chinese fortune cookies, Italian wines, Mexican-style sauces and dips and even a chocolate-flavored desert pasta competed for attention. Just a few years ago, none of these items were available to kosher consumers.

One of the more dramatic signs that kosher food has changed was the booth manned by Alan Kapalinsky, president of Mendel’s Haymish Brands of Brooklyn, N.Y.

There to be sampled were what appeared to be three of the kosher world’s best-known no-no’s: crab, lobster and shrimp. To avoid any possible confusion, however, Kapalinsky markets the products (made from pollack fish seasoned and shaped to resemble the real thing) under his “It’s Not Crab,” It’s Not Lobster,” and “It’s Not Shrimp” brand names.

“Just the thought of this being the real stuff is too much for some religious Jews,” said Kapalinsky. “This is a very emotional product for those that keep kosher. Some feel they are happy to have the taste. Others feel they shouldn’t even like the taste.”

Despite--or perhaps because of--the controversy, Kapalinsky said the “It’s Not . . .” line has doubled its sales volume each of the past three years. He’s also done well enough to attract the attention of competitors.

Empire Kosher Poultry, the nation’s largest supplier of kosher chicken and turkey products, is about to come out with “Tovafish,” which will also taste like shrimp.

A major reason for the broadening of the kosher palate epitomized by the introduction of “It’s Not . . .” and “Tovafish” is the growing number of younger Jews who have become kosher after years of eating non-kosher foods. A second factor is that greater exposure to the non-kosher world has prompted even some people who have always kept kosher to try more exotic tastes.

“I think the kosher market is simply reflecting the general market,” said Gil Marks, editor and publisher of the Kosher Gourmet Magazine, a 4-year-old, bi-monthly magazine with a national circulation of 10,000. “The general American consumer is less xenophobic, more willing to try other ethnic cuisines and more concerned about taste and quality.

“The same holds for the kosher consumer.”

Aside from Jews, Muslims and Seventh-day Adventists also regularly buy kosher foods because their religions have dietary codes that are in some ways similar. Additionally, vegetarians and people with allergies to dairy or shell fish seek out kosher brands because they know by-products that are often hard to trace to their source will be clearly identified in processed kosher goods.

And despite traditional kosher cuisine’s reliance on fatty and sweet ingredients, health food aficionados also gravitate toward products market kosher.

“The perception is that kosher foods are so carefully watched that the heckhsher (kosher certification symbol) is like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval. People equate this close supervision with quality control and healthier ingredients,” said Lubicom’s Lubinsky.

Pepperidge Farms public relations executive Ann Davin agreed. “Non-kosher consumers see the kosher symbol and think quality. That symbol alone carries weight, and because it does it often gives a product an edge in the fight for supermarket shelf-space,” she said.

Since Pepperidge Farms “went kosher,” as Davin puts it, two years ago, the company has upped sales by as much as 15% in areas where Jews are concentrated and where non-Jews tend to be familiar with kosher products, she said.

Whether adherence to kosher standards insures a healthier product is debateable, however. Rabbis concerned with monitoring kosher products say their priority is Jewish law, not health concerns.

“A label that says something is kosher doesn’t make it healthier,” noted Weiner of the Orthodox Union. “What it does mean is that what the label says is absolutely accurate, be it junk food or whatever.”

The only kosher foods--aside from specially prepared low-calorie, low-cholesterol or low-salt products--that are generally healthier than their non-kosher competition, Weiner and others said, are meat and poultry raised, slaughtered and processed according to kosher guidelines.

Alan Katz, vice president of sales and marketing for Pennsylvania-based Empire Kosher Poultry, said that unlike much of the non-kosher poultry industry, his birds are never fed growth stimulants, hormones or artificial ingredients to avoid internal organ defects that would render them non-kosher.

Rabbi Yale Butler, who writes a kosher food column for his Los Angeles weekly newspaper, the B’nai B’rith Messenger, explained that soaking and salting kosher meats using only cold water and the draining of all blood also insures that kosher meats will have lower bacteria counts, a safeguard against salmonella and other food-related diseases.

“The rabbis reject what the government often passes as safe, healthy meat,” Butler said.

Of course, the extra level of supervision required for kosher foods also means higher prices. Jack Kotlar, the owner of Kotlar’s Kosher Market in the Pico-Robertson area, said meat, poultry, cheese and other products that need special handling or ingredients to be certified kosher can cost twice as much as their non-kosher competitors.

Still, he said, the number of kosher consumers in Los Angeles has increased tremendously. “In 1975 when I opened, there was nothing here. Now at least seven kosher markets have opened up within blocks of me in the last half-dozen years,” he said. “The competition has become fierce.”