China's penis restaurant: clean or unclean?

DISCLAIMER: I saw this video last month and had no worthy excuse to blog about it. But after a conversation about what is clean and unclean, I've got my hook. Please, don't watch the above video, starting at 1:57, if you are prone to nausea, pregnant or may become pregnant.

Before there was The Law, there was Passover. After the Exodus came the transmission of Torah to Moses and all the mitzvot included in Levitical code. God only knows why he gave the Israelites all the instructions he did; this is apparent over and again when you read through Leviticus (or A.J. Jacobs' "A Year of Living Biblically").

One of the questions I've heard before, and heard again at Bible study last week, is: Why did God, creator of all, deem some animals clean and others unclean? What was so bad about the coney or the owl or the, gulp, weasel? Why would He give the Israelites such seemingly strange commands in Leviticus 11?

I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground. 45 I am the LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

Oh right. Because He's God. If you don't like His commands, build your own universe.

Oddly, though, the food laws offer no prohibition (that I know of) against what I would consider the most defiled delicacy. For the rest of this story we head to a restaurant in China, via The Times of London, where all they serve filleted penis and such drinks as deer-penis juice, which the reporter calls "the vilest concoction I’ve ever had the privilege to imbibe. It’s as sour as a smacked lemon and as bitter as neat quinine. My face freezes in an agonising spasm, and Lord knows how I manage to keep from throwing up."

The secret ingredient in Israeli Coca-Cola

I've never been one to enjoy soda, definitely not latke or Christmas ham flavors, not even that dark brown syrup known as cola. But when I was in Israel last summer, I fell in love with Coca-Cola. I assumed there was some romance to drinking from the classic glass bottle in the Holy Land. I was wrong.

Turns out the good stuff in Israel is made from real sugar and not that awful corn syrup substitute. The Hebrew version is kosher for Passover, and according to this post via LAObserved, it's harder to find than the missing matzo.

Case of the missing matzo, and not the afikomen

From coast to coast right now, there is a developing story that is a perfect case for the Hardly Boys. (No, it does not involve 9/11 conspiracies.) Passover began little more than 48 hours ago, and one thing is clear: this Exodus remembrance it appears there wasn't even enough time to bake unleavened bread. The New York Times explains:

On Monday, Allison Mnookin circled the aisles of her local Whole Foods store in San Mateo, Calif., three times. There was no matzo to be found.

“Being out of matzo is like being out of milk,” Ms. Mnookin said. So it was on to Safeway. Nothing. Fearing that the box of stale matzo remaining in her pantry from last year would not cut it, she drove nearly 15 miles to Menlo Park.

Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.

The reasons behind the matzo shortage range from manufacturing problems, decisions by some stores not to carry the product this Passover and vague talk of a possible work stoppage.

“It seemed like the whole region had a problem getting it in,” said Jason Hodges, a supervisor in the grocery department at a Whole Foods in Miami. A person who answered the phone at a ShopRite in Philadelphia said stores there were sold out, as was the Food Emporium in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County.

“We heard there was a strike or something,” said the Food Emporium manager, Frantz Baptiste. “The first shipment we had was a month ago, and we never got another one.”

Phone calls and e-mail messages to the largest suppliers of unleavened bread products, Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda, brought no response on Monday, possibly because executives were off for Passover, which began Saturday night.

But Manischewitz officials have said that problems with a new state-of-the-art oven in its only New Jersey plant caused it to scrap this Passover’s supply of Tam Tam crackers, its little six-sided matzo morsels, as well as some less popular matzo varieties.

Trader Joe’s stores opted not to sell Passover matzo this year, as did some Costco stores.

There were similar stories in Los Angeles, detailed and also debunked at LAObserved.

"I got a chuckle out of your items on the 'matzoh shortage' in Los Feliz. As a former resident of that neighborhood I can state that while it's a great place to live on many counts, it has none of the things a more than "semi-observant" Jew needs. I'll be happy to supply directions to Fairfax, Pico-Robertson or my own shtetl of Valley Village, where you can't turn around this time of year without tripping over a box of matzoh!"

To see what some Jews are missing out on, check out this VideoJew installment.

Dodgers strikeout adding Canter's to Koufax

Canter's Deli and Sandy Koufax -- two names that evoke the words 'Jewish Los Angeles' unlike any other. With the Tribe's contributions to Los Angeles' eateries and baseball team, it's fitting that the Dodgers would offer the delicacies that seem as much a part of Judaism as the Passover story: salt-cured beef and matzah ball soup. It only took 50 years for that to happen.

Part of a multimillion-dollar field-level expansion project at Dodger Stadium, Canter's Deli -- an anchor of the Fairfax district since 1948, but with an L.A. history that dates back to 1931 in Boyle Heights -- joined Gordon Biersch, Panda Express and all those Dodger Dog windows. Its menu is truncated but carries the essentials: matzah ball soup, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and that marriage of the two meats, the Canter's Fairfax.

An avid Dodger fan -- the kind who takes his wife to games on their anniversary -- I was eager to sample the new fare. The line was short and my Canter's Fairfax was served up suspiciously quickly. Indeed, something terrible happens to thinly sliced, heavily salted meat when placed under a heat lamp. It doesn't melt in your mouth -- it flakes.

What I couldn't find at Canter's or any other concession stand was a kosher hot dog. Providing a kosher nosh would require renovating the kitchens at Dodger Stadium and peeling Farmer John's grip from its hot dog monopoly. A Dodger spokeswoman said the club has "no immediate plans" for this.

Fortunately, I don't keep kosher. But plenty of Angelenos do, and for years they've felt like they're missing out of one of the most enjoyable elements of rooting for the Dodgers: Eating a lukewarm hot dog that is never as tasty as you remember.

This is from a piece I wrote for this week's Jewish Journal. Plenty of other stadiums offer kosher nosh, including the Boston Red Sox, who just announced the additional menu item alongside the Fenway Frank. That makes Steve Getzug, an L.A. public affairs executive and founding member of the Lou Barak Memorial Hot Dog Committee (I could be so lucky in death), a bit jealous.

"Our field of dreams," he said, "includes kosher hot dogs."

Chief rabbi: animal Nazis might be anti-Semites

Israel's chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, thinks animal rights organizations might be disguising anti-Semitism as grievances with kosher slaughering.

"There are different and odd foods like seafood, which are prepared with serious abuse, but for some reason these organizations are only heard when it comes to Jewish slaughter.

"Koshering organizations in the United States have told me that they were being similarly attacked by these organizations for the prevention of cruelty to animals. They told me that these organizations have serious influence and great power in the United States, and that they use this to present the Jews as cruel people and to make other anti-Semitic accusations. If this attack continues, Jewish slaughter is in danger," Rabbi Metzger said.

The same remarks were made in a booklet handed to the meeting attendees.

"We are living in a reality in which the issue of animals' rights gets a lot of media and public attention. At the same time, different elements are attempting to cancel the Jewish slaughter or make different conditions to disqualify it.

"This compels us to ensure that we do not, God forbid, reach a situation in which those who provoke us will overpower us and the Jewish slaughter will be banned for so-called 'humane' reasons, something which might influence other countries and have very grave results," the booklet stated.

Eating his way to the spiritual center of LA

For the LA Weekly's Jonathan Gold, who last spring became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, eating is a spiritual experience, a journey that has led him to the many dark counters and illuminated eateries in this town. Through eating, Gold, who is Jewish, believes he has found the true identity of a city with more than 100 spoken languages and 600 religious denominations. I wrote a short profile of him for the current issue of UCLA Magazine.

There's just one problem when trying to grab lunch in Westwood Village with L.A.'s culinary connoisseur: He can't think of anywhere to go. "There is sort of a disconnect between the words 'favorite restaurant' and 'Westwood,' " he says. "But I'll think about it."

Gold settles on Flame, a Persian restaurant a few blocks south of Wilshire Boulevard, a corridor that he says makes up for the Village's lack of choices — there's Ambala Dhaba for Indian food, Sunnin for Lebanese and Junior's Deli serving up Jewish soups and meats. This will be Gold's first of several visits before he reviews Flame, which after the meal he determines offers a common Persian menu executed to near perfection.

He typically frequents a restaurant under review five times over the course of a month to get an in-depth sense of what the restaurant is about; in one notable case, he ate at the Nice Time Deli in San Gabriel 17 times.

"It was a Taiwanese place. I absolutely hated the food," he recalls. "There is a certain sweet, smoky taste that is very off-putting — almost like liquid cigarette smoke. They like mucousy texture. There is something called bitter melon, which is like cancer medicine; you eat it and your eyes pop out. ... But I recognized that they were cooking it exactly how people liked it."

Gold's taste is curious and critical, sensitive and incisive. Take, for example, this portion of "Home of the Porno Burrito," one of 10 columns that earned Gold the Pulitzer.

"The potato taco may be El Atacor's enduring glory, but its fame in the online world comes mostly from its Super Burrito, a foil-wrapped construction the size and girth of your forearm, which drapes over a paper plate like a giant, oozing sea cucumber or, perhaps more to the point, like an appendage of John Holmes," he wrote. "It is impossible to look at a Super Burrito without marveling at the flaccid, masculine mass of the thing. It is probably even harder to bite into it without laughing."

The better soda: latke or Christmas ham?

This is one of those ideas you know was drummed up just for free press and white elephant gift exchanges. Why? Because nobody would otherwise think Egg Nog soda would sell well -- and that was the best of the eight Jones Soda flavors that come in the Chanukah and Christmas packs.

After the Chanukah pack arrived at The Jewish Journal last month, I knew I wanted to contribute to the unnecessary discussion of whether your special someone really wants Christmas Ham soda. So I called Jones' PR person half a dozen times and asked her to send a Christmas pack to our office. I wish I hadn't.

A few weeks apart, we set up both gimmicks in the GeekHeeb's office and invited our colleagues to sample the holiday fare.

Latkes and jelly donuts might have tasted good last week, but not when they are liquefied and carbonated and, in the donut's case, atomic pink. The apple sauce and chocolate coins (think Tootsie Rolls) flavors weren't much better.

Yesterday, in the waning hours of Chanukah, I threw the Christmas pack in the fridge and got ready. I had been hungry all day. Surely I could pound a Christmas Ham, even one that came in a bottle and wasn't called Spam.

I started with Sugar Plum and Egg Nog, the latter being better, in my mind, than the real thing. Then I moved on to Christmas Tree, which smelled like pine needles and went down like liquid Ben Gay.

Finally, Christmas Ham, the beverage I'd been waiting about a month to savor, or at least sample. All I can say is that after drinking a small cup of it, which I threw back like a shot, I immediately felt ill. The best way to describe the flavor: Imagine squeezing hot dogs dry and than carbonating that juice.

Happy holidays, Jones Soda.

'Your brain on drugs' meets Jack's customer with the munchies

This is incestuous blogging at its best, but the video below justifies it. See, I posted this commercial for Israeli HDTV. Then, Esther Kustanowitz -- yeah, that Esther -- posted the video with a hat tip to me. But she also added this video which is like the bastard child of the Partnership For a Drug-Free America and Jack in the Box.

Hooters in hot water in Israel

Ha'aretz reports that Israel's first Hooters restaurant -- you know, the place with the wings -- is causing a big stir with religious Jews. In the United States, you'd like people have better things to worry about than the lascivious leanings of a lame bar, but in Israel I'm sure they do. Maccabees, sharpen your swords.

Hooters is just the sort of establishment that many of Netanya's religious expatriate Americans were happy to leave behind. But the giant restaurant chain followed them home last week when it opened its first Israeli branch in Ramat Poleg.

Although they say they'd never even seen the new restaurant, prominent members of Netanya's large contingent of religious Anglos were outraged to learn of the opening. But other native English-speakers seem eager to enjoy this piece of Americana, together with dozens of Israeli youngsters who filled the restaurant to capacity.

"Of all the beautiful things in the States, this is what they bring," Rachel Morrowitz, who grew up in New York, complained. "This restaurant comes from the bottom of the American cultural barrel, and it should stay there."

(skip)

Deputy Mayor Mendi Weiss (National Religious Party) referred to Hooters as a "cheap and crude establishment" and "a foreign element that should never have been imported from the U.S." Weiss added that "this connects to what Hanukkah is about: a culture war in which the Jews had to struggle to retain their own identity."

Hooters also is planning on opening a shop in the pious Muslim emirate of Dubai.

'Welcome to Hell'

Speaking of commercials, it's been a long time since McDonald's had any ads worth making. Their late-night-partying-followed-by-sweet-McGriddle-cakes bit was a trite attempt at hip youthfulness. But this Israeli Micky D's ad is pretty good.



To be honest, I'd know I was in Hell if all I got to eat were Big Macs.

It's not about ethics, it's business

Everyone's favorite Jewish ice cream entrepreneurs, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield -- yes, that Ben and Jerry -- are currently locked up in a bitter battle with soured franchisees.

No religion angle here, except the shirt shopowner Alan Sherman is wearing in Newsweek's photo (right). But this reminds me of a story I wrote last year about accusations that Thomas Kinkade, the self-styled "Painter of Light," had used his Christian faith to defraud investors.

Controversy has surrounded Kinkade for the past four years, after stock of the company he took public (Media Arts Group) plummeted from a high of $23 a share to less than $3. In 2004, he bought the company back at about $4 a share. Kinkade is now the sole owner.

His paintings are known for their vibrant colors and idyllic settings, their country cottages, chilly creeks, and glowing clouds. "The critics may not endorse me," the artist told CT in 2000. "But I own the hearts of the people."

Individual investors run some 500 Kinkade galleries worldwide, with the overwhelming majority in the United States. Signature Galleries, which sell only Kinkade art, cost upwards of $50,000 to open. Media Arts Group required that new owners attend a training conference called "Thomas Kinkade University." Yatooma said this is where his clients drank "the Kinkade Kool-Aid."

"Thomas Kinkade University had a revival-like atmosphere. They would close in prayer and join together in worship. Everybody would leave with their head spinning—now sign the dotted line," Yatooma said. "They thought they were going to make money by sharing the light."

Other investors told me that was nonsense, "comical" even, because they opened Kinkade galleries to make money, not spread the gospel. Which reminds me of that Mafioso axiom: It's not personal, it's business.

Two side notes:

According to my friends at Reel Intelligence, Kinkade's inspirations may soon be, ehem, gracing, the big screen. Or, because the movie is "Thomas Kinkade's Home for Christmas" and a release date has yet to be set, maybe they won't.

Anyway, my favorite flavor is far and away Half Baked.

Thank heavens for hot pastrami

Today I am writing a short piece for UCLA Magazine about Jonathan Gold, the LA Weekly food critic and author of the LA food guide "Counter Intelligence." Coincidentally, I found a story in The New York Times Magazine called "A Counter History," which deals with one of my favorite topics out there: Jewish delis.

It's a fascinating profile of the Lebewohl family and the Second Avenue Deli in Manhattan that Abe opened in 1954, his brother took over in '96 when Abe was murdered and that closed last year after a dispute with the landlord. The deli is reopening in November in Midtown, and now will be run by Abe's nephews.

The Jews who immigrated here during the first half of the last century ate at delis — most of them kosher — regularly. Eventually they moved to the suburbs and traded salami for salad. In the 1960s there were 300 kosher delis in the city and suburbs and a Greater New York Delicatessen Dealers’ Association. That group is long defunct, and you can count the number of marquee delis left in Manhattan on one hand: Carnegie, Katz’s and Stage, none of them kosher. Assimilation is one reason; also, the need to separate dairy from meat limits menu choices (kosher meat is more expensive besides), and New Yorkers do not like limits. The staples of deli food, like matzoh-ball soup and corned beef, migrated in nonkosher form to diners and coffee shops decades ago; you need to be Jewish to eat deli the same way you need to be Italian to eat pizza. But for aficionados of the real thing, the high-quality, old-school kosher renditions of brisket or flanken or center-cut tongue like silk, the Second Avenue Deli was it.

I don't care about kosher, but there is something spiritually inspiring about finely cut pastrami, like the kind Langers serves up a short drive from my office.