Keeping It Kosher : Orthodox Jews in Orange County must travel to dine out. But even with rabbinical certification, some observers wonder if the costs of maintaining a <i> hashgacha </i> are bigger than the appetites for the fare.
Craving some banana blossom eel soup? It’s on the menu at a small eatery in Westminster’s Little Saigon. In Buena Park, you can hear authentic Sufi Muslim dervish music. There’s even a shop in Laguna Beach that sells fancy Soviet Army uniforms from the Afghan war.
With all this diversity, you’d think that with an estimated 100,000 Jews living in Orange County, there would be plenty of kosher restaurants serving up matzo ball soup, gefilte fish and corned beef on rye.
Guess again. There is not one real, or rabbinically certified, kosher restaurant in Orange County, which means that the approximately 250 Orthodox Jewish families living here have to travel to Los Angeles or San Diego to dine out.
“When I want to take the family out for a meal, we go to L.A., or to the park for a picnic,” said Steven Lahat, an Orthodox Jew living in Irvine.
Unlike the majority of Orange County Jews, Lahat and most of the Orthodox community strictly adhere to traditional oral and written codes of Jewish law. Included are rigorous dietary rules outlining what is kosher.
The Orthodox, then, will only dine out at restaurants that have a hashgacha-- a certificate that guarantees that the eatery serves kosher food and is run under Rabbinic supervision.
Orange County’s few kosher-style restaurants, such as the Kosher Bite in Laguna Hills, Benjie’s in Santa Ana and Cappy’s Cafe in Newport Beach, simply don’t cut it for Orthodox or observant Jews because while they may have the potato pancakes, they lack the all-important rabbinical stamp of approval.
At Benjie’s, for instance, the county’s oldest Jewish deli, you can get a pastrami on rye, served with a pickle, cole slaw and an attitude--but neither the food, nor the plate, is kosher.
And even though the Kosher Bite keeps its Hebrew National meats separate from the cream cheese, as required by traditional law, owner Irwin Goldberg said he won’t be getting a hashgacha anytime soon.
“I just can’t afford to pay what the rabbinical authorities charge , “ Goldberg explained through a heavy Brooklyn accent. “They want about $23,000 a year.”
That’s a lot of lox.
While asking that kind of money for a certificate to operate might not seem, well, all that kosher to the outsider, “it’s about the amount necessary for us to cover our costs,” said Rabbi Nissim Davidi, an administrator for the Rabbinical Council of America’s Los Angeles office.
While a few hundred dollars a month goes toward covering the council’s administrative costs, Davidi said that the bulk of the fee for obtaining a hashgacha goes toward paying the salary of a mashgiach, a trained full-time supervisor who stays on the site to make sure all foodstuffs and cooking procedures meet with Orthodox dietary codes.
“Under normal circumstances, a full-time supervisor will make about $1,500 a month,” Rabbi Davidi estimated. “But,” he added, “that doesn’t mean he’ll sit around and do nothing all day. Usually, a mashgiach will work as a waiter or as a cashier in addition to supervising the kitchen.”
Rabbi Avraham Teichman of Kehilla Kosher, another certificate-granting institution in Los Angeles, warned that the administrative costs and supervisor’s salary would probably be higher for a kosher restaurant in Orange County than they would normally be in Los Angeles because not many Orthodox Jews capable of being inspectors live in the county.
“So the mashgiach and the spot-inspectors would be forced to make special commutes,” he said.
To small, 10-table deli owners such as Irwin Goldberg, who must rely on his wife and father when in need of extra help, taking on another salary is out of the question. “I just can’t afford it,” he said, “and I think it’s a shame a community can’t have a kosher restaurant just because small places can’t pay for a full-time (inspector).”
Not all rabbinically supervised restaurants in Los Angeles have full-time supervisors. If the owner is Orthodox, the rabbinical council and other certificate-granting organizations may simply require they be spot-checked, confident that the owner knows how to keep a kosher kitchen and will feel the religious responsibility to do so.
“Look, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but more often than not, a non-practicing Jew often doesn’t know the kosher laws up to the standards of the Orthodox rabbis, so we must insist on full-time supervision,” he explained.
As for Goldberg, who is not Orthodox, and his inability to absorb an extra salary, Rabbi Davidi simply said: “(Getting a hashgacha) is his choice. No one is imposing anything on him. If he has the support of the community, like numerous establishments do in L.A., then it’ll be worth it to him. It’s a business choice.”
Put that way, most people in Orange County’s Jewish community agree that Orange County can’t support a kosher restaurant.
“There’s simply isn’t enough of a base (of kosher customers) in Orange County to support the costs involved in running a kosher restaurant,” said Rabbi Eli Spitz of Bnei Israel in Tustin. “There are many people who keep kosher, but they’re too spread out. It’s not like West L.A., where you have a lot of kosher Jews concentrated in one area, in one neighborhood, and could support many kinds of kosher establishments.”
Stan Weinstein, 71, owner of Benjie’s, agreed. “We live in a county where convenience is important,” Weinstein said between taking orders, slicing roast beef and conferring with his waitress. “And while there are a good amount of kosher Jews, people just aren’t going to drive 30 minutes all the time to go out for dinner. Having kosher food would not be cost effective for the number of kosher people we would attract. I’d have to pay twice the price for kosher meats and for a (supervisor) to be on premises all the time.”
It’s an issue Weinstein’s customers, the majority of whom are not Jewish, do not understand, much less care about.
During dinner time on a recent Sunday afternoon, Benjie’s, a large deli with a New York pace and feel, was only half full. And not a Jewish diner was in the house.
As he packed away his pastrami, Bob Criselle, a Benjie’s regular, was startled when told what kosher food is. “It’s all Jewish food to me,” he said with a shrug, “and I come here just because I love it.”
Members of the Verlure family, who occupied the moon-shaped corner booth, remarked how they liked the liver and onions but agreed that the best dish was the corned beef and cabbage Benjie’s served on St. Patrick’s Day.
Steve Seldes, a Jew in his late 20s who showed up for some takeout, took a more philosophical approach to the question of supporting a real kosher restaurant. “What I think of being Jewish is having a bagel and lox on Sundays, so I come here,” he said. “But kosher laws say we can’t have any ham with that, and I grew up on that stuff.”
Of course, not all Orange County Jews feel the same way. To some, especially those affiliated with the Orthodox community, having a kosher restaurant would make quite a difference in their lives.
“Because we don’t have a kosher restaurant here, I can’t ever go out to dinner with my daughter because she’s strictly kosher,” complained Adele Bilewitz, a South African who found her way to Irvine.
Bilewitz and many Orthodox Jews instead buy kosher meats from Orange County’s two kosher markets and cook at home.
Bilewitz believes the Jewish community would support a kosher restaurant because it would serve as a place where Jews of all levels of observance could congregate and get to know each other.
“But it would have to be a really good place to attract non-kosher Jews and Gentiles,” she warned. “Not four-star quality, but up there.”
There have been at least two attempts at establishing kosher restaurants in Orange County; both fell short. One eatery was owned by Irvino Levin, 69, who is supervisor for Heritage Pointe, a kosher Jewish retirement home in Mission Viejo. The other was in the old Jewish Community Center in Garden Grove.
Levin opened Ervino’s in Santa Ana in 1986, with an eye toward attracting “equal amounts of Jewish and Gentile trade.” So he created a menu featuring kosher French and Italian cuisine.
“When I opened Ervino’s, everyone said there wouldn’t be enough people to support it. But it’s been proven that Orange County diners don’t mind driving a good ways and paying a lot of money for exceptionally good food.”
But they do. Especially people such as Sherry Kessner, an Orthodox Jew who said she’s tired of “schlepping to Los Angeles” every time she feels like eating out.
So tired, in fact, that she, like numerous other Jews, promised they would go out of their way to support any kosher restaurant--even if it was just a pizza and falafel place.
“Sure, I’d support a pizza place,” said Bilewitz, backing off her earlier statement that a kosher restaurant would have to be “really up there” to capture her fancy. “After all, it would mean I wouldn’t have to cook so much anymore.”
What Is Kosher
Kosher meat: Must come from an animal that has a split hoof and chews its cud. Cows, sheep and deer are OK; pork (split hoof only), horses (chews cud only) and dogs (neither) are not. Animals must be slaughtered and cleaned according to traditional law.
Kosher fowl: Chicken, duck, geese and pigeons are kosher.
Kosher dairy: Milk products must originate from a kosher animal and contain no animal (or meat) products of any kind.
Kosher fish: Ones that have fins and scales. Trout and bass are OK; catfish and shellfish are not.
Kosher kitchen: Dietary law forbids the mixing of meat and dairy products (That’s right, no cheeseburgers). So a kosher kitchen will have two sets of dishes, silverware and utensils--one each for meat and dairy.
