HUNGRY GERALD

Thoughts of ice cold borscht and steamy New York weather make HG recall those refuges from the heat: Dairy restaurants. Dairy restaurants obeyed Jewish dietary laws and served only “dairy” and “pavre” food.

They served borscht (beet soup), schav (sorrel soup), blintzes (rolled crepes stuffed with cheese or potato) , kasha varnishkes (buckwheat groats with butterfly shaped pasta), potato pirogen (boiled potato and onion dumplings) and more. Big bowls of excellent bread, bialys, onion rolls — also called “pletzels” and copious amounts of butter. Big bowls of thick sour cream were there on the table to accompany every dish. There was fish (considered “parve” a.k.a. neutral meaning neither meat nor dairy) including many varieties of herring; tuna and sardine salads; gefilte fish with strong horse radish.

No meat. Emphatically no meat. Forbidden. A kosher enterprise could not serve both meat and dairy products.

Every Manhattan neighborhood had a Dairy restaurant (okay, not the Upper East Side). The Paradise and Steinberg’s were popular on the West Side. Ratner’s and Rappaport’s ruled the Lower East Side. Scores more in The Bronx and Brooklyn. All gone. Assimilation or changing tastes?

SJ reports only one traditional “Dairy” remains: B&H on Second Avenue. Long may it cool fevered brows and clog arteries.

New York Times just did a big piece on vegetable burgers. The claim is that these horrors are good to eat. HG doesn’t buy it. Who needs veggie burgers? Have we run out of cows? There are so many good things to do with vegetables rather than dicing them into some semblance of a true burger. Reminds HG of the protose steak that was served at New York’s old time Kosher, non-meat restaurants. These eateries obeyed the Mosaic dietary rule that meat and dairy products not be eaten in the same meal (Kosher law contains a great more complexity than “no meat with your dairy,” but let’s leave that to the Talmudical scholars). Anyway, meatless meat was a concession to Kosher Jews who wanted a taste of flesh with their dairy. Enter the horrifying protose steak. HG believes it was made of soy, barley and wheat products. It most assuredly did not taste like meat. HG believes it tasted like a veggie burger. It was awful.

If you want a non-meat burger-like product why not tuck some falafel (Israeli fried chick pea balls) into a pita with lettuce, onion, tomato, yogurt? Add the hot sauce of your choice (harissa, sriracha, sambal oelek or just plain Tabasco). Now, that’s a veggie burger worth eating.