Kosherfest was a blast; the food, the people and the ambiance. I walked away with many new friends and I also got to meet in person wonderful bloggers that I had only known in cyberspace. I wanted to share some kosher food impressions.

I was not going to write this, as I just wanted to

let things lie. However, now that the news of the imminent demise of the "trendy" J Soho (formally Jezebel) is public, I decided to put down a few thoughts.

I had read about this restaurant down here in South Florida for months. It was supposed to be great. Trendy, popular, celebrities, wonderful food and by the way, it's kosher.

First of all, when it comes to restaurants, there is no by the way it's kosher. No matter how hard they try to 'hide it' it's known. How? Because every article written about the joint mentions it. And once you mention that it’s kosher, you do answer to a higher authority. The authority of a sharp pen that is ready to skewer the food, because kosher food is not supposed to be that good.

By now, you may have read that Kosherfeast was held there. After the meal on Monday night I had made a Facebook comment that the food was subpar. And it was. Here was a restaurateur trying to do his best. There was a big crowd filled with the who’s who of kosher bloggers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders. There was a lot of pressure to deliver a great experience. They didn’t.

The next day, I felt bad that I had commented the way I had. I thought maybe they had an off night; maybe the chef was sick, maybe the help was new . . . whatever it was, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. That was Monday night.

Tuesday I went out to a kosher vegan restaurant on the upper Westside. I just wanted sushi and they said they had it. The sushi was awful and overpriced. It was essential a glob of brown rice with a small piece of flavorless cooked salmon in the middle and something that looked like a piece of avocado wrapped in a dry piece of nori. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the place to warn you away.

So by Wednesday night I was ready for a great meal. My brother from another mother, Rabbi Q ( rabbiq.com AKA Mendal Segal) and I decided to give J Soho another try. I really, really wanted them to redeem themselves. I really wanted to have a 5 star experience.

Well in the words of that infamous singer, Mordechai Jager. “We don’t always get what we want, but sometimes we get what we need.” So I didn’t get what I wanted when I went back. It was not 5 star, but it was interesting.

The flattering part was that Maitre D' recognized us and called us by name. So the service and the treatment were great. However . . . we started with one of their signature cocktails. It was very good and very expensive, sixteen bucks, for about two bucks of ingredients. Then we had appetizers. We split BBQ short rib spring rolls. This was the best item that I was served. We also had an order of brochettes with beef and chicken. Average.

Main Courses:

Rabbi Q had the duck, nothing special in my opinion. And as for me, well, I’m either crazy, stupid or both, I opted for the fifty-one dollar rib eye. They served rib eye at the bloggers dinner, so I thought, “come on, you can do it, you can make it right.” I had a cut that cost about nine bucks raw, wholesale. Doneness wise, it

was cooked as I ordered it, but there was no char to the outside, no lip smacking goodness, nothing special. I don’t usually care for sauces with my steak, but for some reason I found myself wishing there was ketchup on the table, just to give it some flavor.

We got dessert. It was good. There was a chocolate mouse something or other and I had some kind of creamy crunchy stuff served in a martini glass. Now I know that’s not a very “foodie” way to put things but by that point in the evening I was feeling pretty ripped off and pretty annoyed.

I felt like a fool. But worse, I felt embarrassed for the kosher world. Like it or not, when you open a kosher restaurant that caters to upscale and celebrity clientele, if you don’t deliver, it sullies the reputation for all of us. It says to the public that doesn’t know any better that kosher food can’t be any good.

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you know better. But to the general public, that becomes the face of kosher; bland over-priced food and yes it’s kosher. The truth is that it doesn’t take much extra effort to turn what they served into memorable dishes. You just have to care more about your customers’ culinary experience than about which ‘flash-in-the-pan’ celebrity is sitting at your bar.

I hope that the end of J Soho serves as a lesson to other establishments, as well as to all of us. If you look at the successful kosher restaurants, bloggers, writers and chefs, you’ll see that it’s always about the food first. Because when it’s about the food first, it automatically becomes about the customer or guest first as well.

By t

he way, two happy notes about the evening: When we were there, we watched as two nice Jewish boys, met two nice Jewish girls and respectfully got to know each other over dinner.

The second is that after that meal, we went to the Brandy Library and had a scotch tasting that somehow numbed away the pain of the evening, reassured us that our palates were functioning fine (the scotch was really good) and resulted in beginning of a beautiful friendship.

L’Chaim . . . Avi