New York City’s popular Israeli restaurant 12 Chairs Café is going kosher — but only for four nights.
The Tel Aviv-inspired spot in SoHo is known for its brunch — particularly its jachnun, a Yemenite fried dough that’s only available on weekends — but not for being kosher. From March 3 to March 6, however, diners can enjoy a special certified kosher prix-fixe meal, priced at $180 per person.
The restaurant — which opened in 2001, and established a second branch in Williamsburg in 2015 — is teaming up with Chef Avi Levy from Jerusalem kosher restaurant Hamotzi to create a special Moroccan-Algerian menu that will include dips, salads, breads, Glatt kosher meat entrées and kosher wine.
“We’re an Israeli restaurant and it’s not kosher, and we wanted to bring it to the new customers that we want, to the new audience that we want, because a lot of people know 12 Chairs, but because it’s not kosher, it sucks,” the restaurant’s marketing coordinator, Kate Amrani, said. “We have a lot of people that [said] they’re sad that it’s not kosher. And we can do it, and we’re Jewish, and we understand that. So why not bring a big chef that we all know and make it kosher?”
Born in Jerusalem, Levy, 48, with whom 12 Chairs is partnering, something of a legend in Israel. As a teen, Levy became addicted to drugs and was unable to complete his army service. After serving multiple drug-related prison sentences, during which he continued cooking — a skill he learned from his mother as a child — Levy entered rehab, and when he got clean, his sister entered him into the second season of the Israeli version of “Master Chef” in 2011, which he won.
The following year, with the assistance of the co-owner of the Café Rimon kosher chain, Levy opened Hamotzi to rave reviews.
The collaboration with 12 Chairs, which was named to our list of 18 essential Israeli restaurants in New York City, is Levy’s first popup in New York City.
“How excited I am to arrive at a gorgeous restaurant in New York to do a kosher week at a restaurant that has been hosting a non-kosher audience for many years,” Levy wrote in an Instagram story Tuesday. “They are specially preparing the restaurant. An amazing operation. What fun.”
For four nights this March, 12 Chairs Café is going kosher as part of a popup event with Israeli chef Avi Levy. (Courtesy Eleventh House PR. Photo by Tal Hamdi)
This will be 12 Chairs’ third popup, following two collaborations last year with chef Ohad Levi from Mamo in Eilat and chef Moshiko Gamlieli, the founder of Israeli restaurants Bar 51, Mona and Radler.
This popup will be 12 Chairs’ first time going kosher. The special event will take place at 12 Chairs Next Door, the restaurant’s private event space, which has a separate kitchen from the adjacent main restaurant. Diners who want to experience the everyday 12 Chairs menu and atmosphere can still do so at the main restaurant (or head to their Brooklyn outpost).
Rabbi Sholtiel Lebovic, the director of GoKosher.org, is helping to turn 12 Chairs over for those four nights. Though Lebovic’s business typically kashers private homes, he’s also worked with Chef Daniel Boulud’s namesake restaurant, Daniel, on the Upper East Side, to make it kosher for a one-time, private event.
Kashering 12 Chairs for this popup will include the process of immersing dinnerware and glassware in the mikvah, or ritual bath, and placing dinnerware and flatware in boiling water.
Ceramic, Lebovic explained, cannot be made kosher, so the restaurant is purchasing new plates, as well as new deep fryers, because old grease is difficult to remove. (The new plates will be held in storage for possible future kosher events.)
They’ll begin kashering everything the Sunday before guests begin arriving; Lebovic said that with his team of three, the process will take less than two full days. During the run of the popup, Lebovic will serve as the mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, who will ensure that everything is up to code.
“Once you have all those things in place, you can maintain and run a kosher kitchen,” he said.
12 Chairs Next Door, which has a capacity of 55, will seat 40 guests at each of the two dining sessions available per evening, at 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
As of press time per Resy.com, all seatings of the popup are sold out.
“It seems that it’s struck a chord, that there’s enough people, the critical mass is there,” Lebovic said. “They want the kosher [experience].”
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