Chubby Chickpea Kosher No More

Image by Facebook
Boston’s first kosher food truck is backing up on its kosher certification.
, whose opening the Forward touted in 2013, Tweeted last week that “effective immediately our truck has decided to give up its Kosher Certification. Love the KVH; just made sense.”
KVH is the kashrut division of the Rabbinical Council of New England.
In a statement, owner Avi Shemtov said that renouncing kosher status “will allow us to expand to weekend hours and bring our modern Middle Eastern food to an even wider audience.”
He also explained to the Forward that kosher certification ultimately didn’t make business sense.
“As a Jewish-owned-and-operated company, we felt that becoming kosher fit our ethos and would better serve our customers,” he said in an email. “After almost two years under kosher supervision, we compiled enough data to understand that although our customers certainly include many practicing and non-practicing members of the Jewish community, by and large our base does not require kosher food.”
Operating a kosher business ”presents significant financial and logistical investments that simply can not be recouped if your customers do not demand Kosher food. That has become our reality and we have chosen to embrace it.”
The change “will go unnoticed” by most customers, Shemtov insisted in his statement. “It represents no change in our menu, schedule or appearance.”
Shemtov’s keeping busy this summer. His cookbook, “The Single Guy Cookbook: How to Cook Comfort Food Favorites Faster, Easier and Cheaper Than Going Out” (Page Street Publishing Co.), debuted last week.
A Publishers’ Weekly review also provides some insight into why Shemtov might have dropped his kosher creds. “Shemtov, a husband and father of two who runs a glatt kosher Middle Eastern food truck in Boston… fills this cookbook with a smorgasbord of bachelor-friendly dishes that are rarely Middle-Eastern and nearly always treyf.”
Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor of the Forward.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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.