When I tell people I live on the Upper West Side, I get a very typical response: “Ahh…the heart of the Jewish world.” But with all due respect to Supersol, Estihana, Gan Asia, etc., we aint got nothin’ on Brooklyn.
I woke up on Sunday morning to my roommate asking me if I wanted to go out to Brooklyn and pay a visit to Burgers Bar (when you are 22, you can wake up late enough for it to be time for lunch).
Because it took over an hour to get out there, we decided, after eating our luscious burgers, to explore the Jewish wonders of Coney Island Ave. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this. It felt as though every single restaurant was kosher, and it wasn’t just your stereotypical schwarma and pizza joints.
There was actually a kosher Mexican restaurant! Carlos and Gabby’s has ventured into territory no kosher businessman has ever entered. Most Mexican cuisine is either dairy, meat or dairy and meat. I didn’t go into the restaurant to check how they accomplish the almost impossible task of kosher Mexican, but it impressed me nonetheless.
Then, we saw the Holy Grail of kosher supermarkets, Pomegranate (I’d give you a link but I can’t find a website for it). If you have ever been in a kosher market, the first question that pops in your head is whether or not this place would pass a health inspection. This is not the case with Pomegranate.
Pomegranate looks like a normal supermarket, feels like a normal supermarket, smells like a normal supermarket, has the prices of a normal supermarket, but everything is kosher. It literally has every single mainstream product that happens to have a hechsher (kosher certification) along with your typical Israeli/Jewish products.
If this were Newsies, I would be Jack Kelly and Coney Island Ave. would be Spot Conlon.
kosher
Pronounced: KOH-sher, Origin: Hebrew, adhering to kashrut, the traditional Jewish dietary laws.
