Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Bay-Area Bagel Saviors and All the Weekly Dish

San Francisco’s Bagel Saviors

Amid all the about lousy bagels in the Bay Area comes this welcome bit of news: Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman of Wise Sons deli will open a bagel shop this month on Fillmore St. in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Bloom and Beckerman will aim to crank out more than 5,000 bagels daily; the shop will seat 12.

It’s a huge comeback for the duo, whose commercial baking operation was hit by a devastating fire early this year.

A Muslim, a Jew, and a Vegan Walk Into a Restaurant…

Image by Courtesy of The Pantry

The Pantry’s falafel burger.

“Hey! Did you hear the one about the Muslim, the Jew and the Vegan who went to dinner? Well, they had a great time.”

That’s the pitch for The Pantry, which just opened as Orlando, Florida’s first kosher/halal/part-vegan/local/ecologically aware eatery.

Kosher and vegan options are cooked in separate prep areas with their own utensils.

The menu, appropriately, careens from shakshuka to stir-fries to nachos to pasta.

Band Name of the Week

Jerry’s Kosher Deli plays the music of Jerry Garcia, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Bob Marley and others — “with a Jewish Jam twist.” The band launched the San Francisco Giants’ Jewish Heritage Nights program this week at AT&T Park.

Jewish Food Fest in Scranton

For at least one day, Scranton, Pennsylvania, will become a hotbed of Jewish cuisine. The Jewish Discovery Center’s annual food festival is slated for August 2 at PNC Field in nearby Moosic.

On tap: Stuffed cabbage, Shor Habor kosher hot dogs and desserts, including chocolate babka and fruit hamantaschen, says the Scranton Times-Tribune.

More Breaking Kosher News From Pennsylvania

A new kosher eatery’s opened its doors in the Philly suburb of Narberth, reports The Jewish Exponent.

Star of David Kosher Grill is the latest spot from local restaurateur Sharon Abargel, whose Northeast Philadelphia eateries include kosher spots Espresso Café and Japanika, which serves sushi, Chinese and American food.

Star of David will serve a slightly disturbing combination of kosher sushi, Chinese food, steak, shwarama and burgers.

Changing of the Deli Guard in Buffalo

Risa Paonessa, who owns several Jewish delis in Buffalo, will take over the former Reuben’s New York Deli, the Buffalo News says.

Look for a menu similar to her other spots, with corned beef, whitefish salad and chopped liver; soups like matzo ball soup and sweet-and-sour cabbage and salads. But “We’ll probably do a little bit of expansion, things like potato pancakes, kasha varnishkes, noodle kugel, things like that.”

Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.