It’s all kosher, all the time at a new South Bay store opened by a pair of Israeli transplants.
Tucked into a strip mall between a nail salon and a taqueria on South Bascom Avenue in San Jose, Pars Kosher Market threw open its doors in August, boasting a select array of lentils, sweets and kosher cuts of lamb. Owners Rami and Nadia Haluyan found a receptive community, and have steadily expanded their offerings to meet a growing demand.
Business was brisk at Rosh Hashanah, according to the couple, who are gearing up for the next big holiday involving culinary feasts, Passover.
“New people are coming in,” said Nadia Haluyan, 38, the everpresent face of the 1,500-square-foot shop. “It’s a good sign. We’re going to have everything ready for Passover,” which this year begins April 6.
Pars Kosher Market is one of very few all-kosher shops in the nine Bay Area counties (though at 60 years old, Oakland Kosher Foods remains the grandfather of them all, with an on-site butcher, catering service and in-shop eatery.)
Pars is more of a grocery store, offering kosher pasta and packaged sliced meats from Israel, New York and Los Angeles. In between, there are yogurts, cheeses and blintzes in the refrigerator, and crackers, cookies, rice and cereal lining the shelves. As for meats, there’s a variety of both pre-cut frozen and fresh rib-eye, chicken and brisket.
The Haluyans hope to add an outdoor café with a bigger selection of fresh and hot homemade foods in the near future.
“We already have very large support of the community,” said Rami Haluyan, 46, who works days as a quality control officer for L.P. Glassblowing Inc., which makes quartz for the semiconductor industry. In the evenings and on Sundays, he comes in to help his wife.
“This is much better than I expected,” he said of the reception they’ve received. “We need to expand.”
In the six months since Pars first opened, Haluyan said they have built a steady base of 300 customers, and have been selling about 800 pounds of meat a week — up from 500 pounds a week just three months ago. The couple got an initial boost with assistance from Hebrew Free Loan in San Francisco, he noted.
Much of their business has come via word of mouth, starting with Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, the Orthodox synagogue to which his family belongs. A number of local Chabadniks patronize the store.
Unofficial estimates put the number of Jews living in the South Bay at 50,000, and a much smaller number of those keep kosher. It’s been a decade since there has been a kosher grocery in San Jose, following the shuttering of Willow Glen Kosher Market on Lincoln Avenue in 2002.
The Haluyans moved to Saratoga from Israel in 2006 with their children, Ron, now 16, and Or, now 12, to be closer to Rami’s mother and two sisters.
Both Rami and Nadia were born in Iran, raised in an Orthodox household, and moved independently to Israel in the 1980s. They met in 1993 and for years ran a restaurant in Tel Aviv called Bambi.
The name “Pars” refers to their Persian culture. (The market carries some Persian foods, too.)
Chabad of San Jose Rabbi Aaron Cunin is thrilled that there is now a kosher market about a block from his home. Before Pars opened, he’d scour the aisles at area markets for kosher meats. Or he’d wait with others, sometimes for up to an hour, for a delivery truck bringing huge pallets of frozen beef and poultry from Los Angeles once a month.
“We’d never really know when the driver would arrive,” the rabbi said. “And then we’d all have to wait there to divide it all up.”
Pars has made shopping much easier. For example, recently Cunin was able to drop by and pick up an array of Israeli cheeses and spreads, not to be found anywhere else, for an Israeli woman in the hospital. “It’s just so convenient and spontaneous,” he said.
And it’s more than that.
“Going to the store is not just a transaction,” Cunin said. “It’s an experience. My kids can see that everything is kosher. I don’t have to say, ‘No, you can’t have this and you can’t have that.’ Now, they can get whatever they want, and they have all this selection all in one place.” n
Pars Kosher Market is located at 3978 S. Bascom Ave., San Jose. Closed on Saturday. Information: (408) 340-5443.