Sephardim 'usurp' London Jewish fare

 It's here, it's there, it's penetrated the heart of Jewish life. Zest, a Sephardi Kosher restaurant at London's gleaming new Jewish centre, JW3, has been discombobulating Britain's leading (Ashkenazi) food critics, displacing the artery-hardening fare of their ancestors with sunny, vegetable-rich, healthy dishes.  Zest's food may not be what bubba served up, but the critics have to concede: it is mouth-wateringly delicious...

Jay Rayner offers up this taster in The Guardian:

Something terrible has happened to my people. They have lost their way. It's worse even than that whole 40-years-in-the-desert thing which, in any case, was just a map reading issue. This is about sense of identity. It's about the very essence of what it is to be a Jew; or at least a north west London Jew like me whose forebears came from that bit of Eastern Europe, where a pogrom was the nearest anyone had to a spectator sport and the menus were written with the bitter winters in mind.

The new London Jewish centre, JW3, has a restaurant serving Sephardi food (Photo: Hufton+Crow)

Yes, it's all to do with dinner. For decades being an Ashkenazi Jew in London meant going nose down in lumps of salted meat, boiled to a point whereby you could eat them without a full complement of teeth. It meant pucks of shredded potato and onion that have taken a long, shameless bath in the deep fat fryer. There were pickled bits and dirty notions involving large amounts of chicken fat. Oh the things we could do with chicken fat. For decades this diet also held sway under the unforgiving, Middle Eastern sun of Israel, which isn't that surprising. Many of the original Jewish settlers were Ashkenazis. This was what they ate. It was who they were.

Do I need to tell you this food is truly awful? A Jewish cuisine? Don't be silly. It's nowhere near refined enough to be called that. The only people who should ever talk about a "Jewish cuisine" are French Jews showing off their new kitchens. If it emerged now as a food trend, public health officials would set up outreach centres in an attempt to nudge people away from a lifetime of ever-hardening arteries. But it's our food. It's my food. And I love it.

 
(Tuna croquettes. Photo: Katherine Rose/ Observer)
 
So what's gone wrong? I'll tell you what's gone wrong. The food of the Ashkenazis has been usurped by the food of their Mediterranean brothers, the Sephardim. Theirs is a culinary tradition full of sunlight and warmth and zest and life, rather than dead things and chicken fat. We've seen it in the dishes served at Ottolenghi and at Honey & Co and now it's at Zest, the thrilling restaurant in the newly opened Jewish cultural centre JW3, off London's Finchley Road. The chefs are north Londoner Josh Katz and Israeli- born Eran Tibi, both of whom previously worked for Yotam Ottolenghi, because it's the law that you must do so before setting up a restaurant like this. Quietly, unexpectedly – and without anybody bothering to consult me – Jewish food has become really, really good. Frankly, I'm appalled.

It all reflects a demographic and cultural change in Israel, which may once have been dominated by the Ashkenazis but increasingly has become a Middle Eastern country. Inevitably it is those flavours which now hold sway. Perhaps they noticed that the food of the Sephardim is simply much better suited to keeping kosher. The Ashkenazi repertoire is essentially the diet of the Slavic peoples minus the pig. Sephardic food is far less reliant on meat or butter. It focuses on vegetables, olive oil and occasional outbreaks of fish. Gastronomically, a lot of kosher Ashkenazi food is about compromise, to keep true to the imperative not to mix milk and meat. There is very little in the way of compromise about the Sephardic diet. The food is exactly the same as that eaten by the non-Jews in that part of the world.

Read article in full

Times and Sunday Times food critic Giles Coren voices similar sentiments here , although a sublime rugelach makes him ready to forgive Sephardi culinary imperialism. (With thanks: Anne)