New Cookbooks from Jewish Restaurants Jack’s Wife Freda and The Palomar

It’s a boom time for Jewish restaurants. From artisanal delicatessens serving up house-made pastrami with pickled mustard seeds to nouveau Israeli eateries slinging za’atar-topped shakshuka, global Jewish cuisine has found its way to the front page of dining culture, both in America and abroad. And wherever there are great restaurants, cookbooks eventually (and in some cases, quite quickly!) follow.

Jewish-restaurant cookbooks date back at least as far as the 1930s when Fania Lewando, owner of a popular vegetarian eatery in pre-WWII Poland, published a collection of 400 meat-free dishes, many of which she served to her customers. In the following decades, classic American Jewish restaurants from The Second Avenue Deli to Ratner’s also produced cookbooks of their famed recipes. And in recent years, a slew of restaurants like Brooklyn’s Mile End, Manhattan’s Balaboosta and Breads Bakery, and Philadelphia’s Zahav have jumped into the publishing fray. It’s enough to keep a home cook elbow deep in chicken soup for a lifetime.

Continue reading "New Cookbooks from Jewish Restaurants Jack’s Wife Freda and The Palomar" at...