Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 21, 2022

A mere block from Budapest's mammoth Keleti railway station sits Tibor Rosenstein's eponymous restaurant. The entrance comes off a quiet, unassuming residential corner far from the city's traditional culinary hubs. But like a temple, Rosenstein Restaurant stands alone as a monument to historical Jewish-Hungarian cuisine drawing celebrities, television personalities and Jewish gastronomic globetrotters eager for a taste of the past.

"My personal cuisine and my dishes are traditional Hungarian-Jewish cuisine," said Rosenstein. This includes goose sausage and cholent, the traditional Jewish Sabbath stew left to cook overnight. Rosenstein's secret ingredient is ground paprika perhaps the most beloved spice in all Hungarian cuisine.

An estimated 100,000 Jews remained in Budapest following Soviet liberation on 13 February 1945. Many families who stayed in the country relegated their Jewish heritage as a trivial aspect of their identity, leaving children to discover it only later in life. Today, the community is growing once again, primarily in the historic Jewish quarter surrounding the famous Dohny Synagogue, one of the largest synagogues in the world. Jewish restaurants, primarily kosher ones, have since sprung up in the neighbourhood, including most recently the city's first and only fast food kosher establishment, Kosher MeatUp. Rosenstein's is unique in the city for its obvious Jewish backbone.

Not that the restaurant is stuck in the past, replaying an old formula without ever adapting. Soon it'll have its own kosher coffee roaster to go along with its existing selection of kosher beers the logo of which features a stencil of Rosenstein's charismatic grin topped with a yarmulke (a kippah or skullcap). The pandemic prevented him from publishing a cookbook for the restaurant's 25th anniversary, but plans are underway to release one in honour of the 30th anniversary in 2025.

Suffice it to say, Rosenstein isn't slowing down any time soon.

"I keep the fire alive through my dishes, or through welcoming and serving a large number of Jewish guests coming from abroad," he said, something he credits in part to his appearance in a 2017 episode of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods.

Read more from the original source:

The food legacy of a Holocaust survivor - BBC

Category: Jewish Cuisine
Tags: