On a recent Saturday night in SoHo, Victoria Kellogg, 34, co-hosted a birthday party for more than 100 people at a kosher restaurant. Kellogg, a real estate agent who regularly organizes parties for her friends at spots such as Gansevoort Park and Sapphire Lounge on the Lower East Side, isn’t Jewish and neither are her co-hosts, but that was irrelevant. The party guests, mostly 30-something professionals, packed in to swill champagne, nibble on birthday cake and dance to the beats of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite.” “Everyone had a great time,” she says. “The owner Henry was an awesome host.”
Welcome to Jezebel, a new kosher restaurant co-owned by nightlife impresario Henry Stimler that has both Jews and gentiles vying for a taste. Looking out over the people filtering in, Stimler, who describes himself as a “modern Jew,” gestures at his guests, pointing out tables of “Long Island Jews . . . very wealthy Jews . . . young hip very wealthy Syrian Jews” and — oh yes — some very pretty girls. He estimates that the people in the room are about 60 percent Jewish, 40 percent gentile.
“We curate our crowd to make sure it’s not just a sea of yarmulkes,” he explains, saying he’ll call up friends at the Rose Bar or various concierge services to get the mix right. “We set out to create a place where everyone feels at home.”
Here, the walls are decorated with famous works of art into which notable Jews have been inserted (think Babs Streisand as Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring”), and a chic bald waitress serves $15 cocktails named after Jewish mobsters. Tomorrow, they’re planning a party for the first night of Hanukkah with doughnuts, latkes and brisket tacos, but it promises to be a far cry from dinner at bubbe’s and forced dreidel play.
“I always tell people that we’re not a kosher restaurant,” says co-owner Menachem Senderowicz. “We’re a sexy hip restaurant that happens to be kosher.”
Childhood pals from Swiss summer camp, Stimler, from London, and Senderowicz, from Belgium, opened Jezebel in July. The two have lived in New York for years and have long been active in the nightlife scene — last spring they staged a risqué Yiddish cabaret at the Lower East Side club The Box — but they longed for a spot where they could hang out and keep kosher.
“We love to go out, but we were extremely restricted,” says Senderowicz, 34. “Most [kosher restaurants] are usually so stale; they miss the edge and the sexiness that we bring to the table.”
Indeed, everything brought to the table at the West Broadway spot is kosher — but there’s nary a helping of chopped liver in sight.
Both the main dining room and the bar offer the sort of trendy fare (and high prices) common to the menus of many of Jezebel’s clubby counterparts, from hamachi crudo ($18) to truffle fries ($9) to duck sliders ($16) to a 16-ounce grilled prime rib-eye ($48), but the kitchen is strictly kosher. There’s no dairy on the menu, and a full-time rabbinical supervisor works in the kitchen to ensure cooks adhere to Jewish law.
There is even a nondairy mac and “cheese” ($9 for a side) that took chef Chris Mitchell, 34, a practicing Catholic, three weeks of trial-and-error to create. “I had to find what thickening agents and stabilizers would work best,” he says, noting that not being able to use butter has led him to use molecular gastronomy techniques and ingredients like agar agar or guar gum to add heft to his sauces.
Stimler says they’ve intentionally avoided hiring kosher chefs, both with Mitchell and Bradford Thompson, the Cafe Boulud alum who served as Jezebel’s chef early on. “We deliberately wanted a chef that had no preconceived notion of kosher,” says Stimler, 32.
As befitting both those who observe the Sabbath or are night owls, the action gets started late at Jezebel. It’s relatively subdued until the clock strikes 10, when a chic crowd starts strolling in and the decibel level of the music rises. A hulking bouncer stands by a red velvet rope outside a discreetly signed door.
Celebs might stop by, though when asked about the restaurant’s A-list clientele, Stimler at first demurs — “I don’t think we want to name drop” — before mentioning that Russell Simmons’ daughter was in last week, a Knick or a Ranger pops in occasionally and that even Lindsay Lohan recently paid a visit. “She’s a sweet girl,” he says, before taking out his iPhone to display a texting exchange with her.
“There’s always somebody here,” says Chava Herz, a 28-year-old who was raised Orthodox but now considers herself just “deeply spiritual.” She describes herself as a “big 1Oak fan” and says she often enjoys starting the night at Jezebel.
Even when boldface names aren’t in the house, there’s a sense that a large percentage of the crowd consider themselves friends with the owners.
Herz, for one, counts herself among Stimler’s friends, and even though she was raised in the faith, she says his parties — not the kosher element — are the big draw.
“It’s a great spot that my friends and I love to hang out in,” says the Lower East Side resident. “I have a mother who is kosher and brought her to Jezebel for my birthday . . . she couldn’t believe this was a kosher restaurant.”
What is kosher, exactly?
* Eating certain animals is wholly forbidden — including pig, rabbit, all shellfish and reptiles, catfish and sturgeon, eagles, owls and most insects.
* Animals must be slaughtered in a special humane manner, killed with a very sharp knife and a single quick cut through the throat.
* Meat and dairy cannot be manufactured or consumed together.
* Packaged food that is certified kosher must have its production facilities pass the inspection of a rabbinic field representative.
* Certified kosher restaurants must employ a full-time on-site supervisor to turn on the ovens, inspect and clean vegetables, check deliveries for kosher certification and monitor the kitchen staff.
Sources: Orthodox Union, About.com
heber@nypost.com