Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.
J. is holding a recipe contest called Matzah Madness! Surely you have an original matzah-based recipe, either to eat during Passover week or to use up extra boxes after the holiday. Enter your ideas into our contest, and tell your friends. I’ll be teaming up with fellow J. food contributors Faith Kramer and Micah Siva to judge your creations, and the winner will receive $250 and the glory of having their recipe shared in J. The deadline to enter at jweekly.com/matzah-madness-contest is March 1.
We’ve written about chef Spencer Horovitz and his Jewish pop-up Hadeem a number of times, including in this column on Feb. 7 where we shared that he is a semifinalist for a James Beard Award in the emerging chef category. The Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group will be hosting Hadeem for two pop-up dinners in San Francisco on Feb. 27 and 28, both with tickets, so purchasers will be guaranteed a seat. (Popular pop-ups like Hadeem often have long lines.)
Tickets for a multiple-course meal are $95, with the opportunity to add specialty cocktails or wine pairings on site. While the menu is in flux, dishes could include cornish hen schnitzel, or guava and dulce de leche babka with burnt cinnamon crème anglaise. Substitutions can be made for vegetarians and pescaterians. Hadeem mixes California and Jewish influences from Horovitz’s multicultural Jewish background in Los Angeles.
Bay Kosher, the small kosher grocery store in Lafayette run by Chabad of Lamorinda, recently announced that it has teamed up with Uber to make deliveries of kosher food all around the Bay Area, and as far as Sacramento and Stockton for an additional charge. Fees are listed at baykosher.com/delivery. The market is also piloting a special delivery service to the Peninsula JCC, where people can order online and pick up their groceries in Foster City rather than driving to the East Bay.
We were pleased to see the news in Berkeleyside about the reopening of Homemade Cafe, a Berkeley institution owned by Collin Doran that closed with little warning on Jan. 1. The reopening is due to the intervention of a friendly neighbor, Rohit Singh, owner of the neighboring Breads of India, who is partnering with Doran.
Doran made the sad decision to close when the numbers were no longer adding up. In June 2023 we wrote about his “Everybody Eats” program, in which diners could buy someone in need a breakfast for $5. The initiative drew international attention. He said the idea came from his Jewish grandfather, who taught him “to never look down on anyone.”
(Note that the mural on the side of his restaurant that featured Magen Davids made from bacon strips is no longer there.)
While some changes will be made to streamline the operation, Doran is just happy to be back in business. Homemade Cafe is at 2454 Sacramento St.
The food blog OMG! Yummy recently marked its 15th anniversary. The blog, subtitled “Recipes from a Multicultural Jewish Kitchen,” was started in 2010 by Jewish food writer and author Beth Lee of San Jose. We wrote about Lee when she published “The Essential Jewish Baking Cookbook: 50 Traditional Recipes for Every Occasion” in 2021. Mazel tov, Beth!
Tell your L.A. friends: Now they, too, can enjoy Boichik Bagels. Based in Berkeley, Boichik just opened its first L.A. store at 4655 Hollywood Blvd. in the Loz Feliz neighborhood.