LUBICOM CEO Menachem Lubinsky is the founder and co-producer of Kosherfest, the annual trade event for the kosher food & beverage industry and is the editor-in-chief of KosherToday.
Eye on Kosher shares Lubinsky’s personal reflections on kosher-related topics and is released on alternating weeks with My Sixth Sense, which can be found at http://www.koshertoday.com
The New Kosher Foods
Feb 23, 2009A veteran kosher food distributor reminisced of the days when his full list of kosher items that he had to offer stores was in the vicinity of 800 – 1000. Today, he says that list is more than 10 times that and growing. He was probably speaking of an era when most people thought of kosher as being limited to gefilte fish, chopped liver, and stuffed cabbage. The kosher take-out store of yesteryear was also limited to a few salads, meats, kishke, cholent and kugel.
Fast forward to today’s plethora of kosher food products with its unprecedented variety and a completely different palate, mostly of younger kosher consumers. Shop a store like Pomegranate in Flatbush and you’ll learn just how much has changed. The very existence of a state-of-the-art upscale supermarket like Pomegranate is the best evidence of the enormous changes that have taken place in kosher.
You quickly learn that cheese is more than American, Muenster, Mozzarella and Swiss. Look for sauce and there is certainly much more than existed only a few years ago. For many customers, no Shabbos is complete without a variety of dips, a far cry from the mixture of mayonnaise and horseradish or mayonnaise and ketchup that some baby boomers may remember. How about olives that we used to classify as being either green or black. Or let’s try soup that usually meant matzoh ball, noodles, rice, or vegetable.
So here are some products that you can now find at the Pomegranate. In cheese, the huge kosher supermarket ages some of the cheeses themselves. The cheese on the shelf includes Bourcin Pepper, Chipotle Cheddar, Israeli Kashkaval, Apricot Lavender, Tilsiter, Sundried Tomato, Jalapeno, Munstarella Olive, Spicy Onion Garlic & Chives, Cranberry with Port Wine, Mild Salsa, Romesco Munstarella, Ementahl, Goat Cheese, Smoked Provolne, Mozzarella Anti Pasti, Hoop Cheese, and Ciliegine Mozzarella.
Pomegranate makes its own sauces including Bleu Cheese Dressing, Ranch Dressing, Vodka, Romesco, and Putannesca. As for dips and salads, the list includes Kalamata Olives Tapanade, Green Olives Tapanade, Schuba Salad, Honey Mustard Herring, Black Bean Mango Salad, Git Ba’Feferte Salad, Bazergan, Baluga Herring, Wheat Berry Salad, Hot Cherry Peppers, Purple Eggplant Dip, Garlic Aioli, Asparagus Dip, Jalapeno Pepper Dip, TokyoSlaw, ZuchiniSlaw, Sesame Ginger Dip, Bouqet Garni Dip, and Tomato & Garlic Salad. Take a look at the buckets of olives and they are labeled Cerignola, Nicoise, Kalamata, Baresane, Calabresi, Almond Stuffed, Orange Peel (Stuffed), Alfonso, and Cracked Sicilian.
I next visited the soups, which included Potato Leek, Zucchini, Clear White Miso Broth, Carrot Ginger, Beef Cabbage, and Butternut Squash. Nearby were the Pomegranate kugels that included Peach Crumble, Champagne Grape, Mange & Fruit Apple, Apple Blueberry, Apple Cherry, Asparagus, and Cauliflower.
You can find the same variety in fish, frozen foods, and jams. There is so much that has changed in the kosher set in dry goods, snack foods, the health oriented products (i.e. Sugar-free and Spelt-free) and dairy.
The world of kosher has changed so dramatically that the old world that the distributor spoke of is just a memory. That is not to say that the traditional foods are not available. At Pomegranate, they maintain a chef who is specifically charged with preparing the traditional foods, even including kishke and ptcha (galler). I thought that this would be a worthwhile exercise just to give my readers an idea of just how much things have changed in kosher.