The NewHeights Of Nouvelle

Caterers are upping the ante when it comes to food as performance art at simchas.

by Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week

In the old days, if you were throwing a wedding or bar mitzvah, you invited your guests over to the house, ordered a platter of corned beef and pastrami sandwiches from the local kosher deli, and used the bathtub as an ice bucket for celery tonic and beer. Even at upscale celebrations, liver strudel shared the buffet table with Stuffed Baby Flounder Veronique. You tied the knot, and then you tasted the Tongue Polonaise.
Nowadays, as a roundup of kosher caterers from the New York area shows, the quest is for the newest, the latest, the most stylish, the most gourmet.
If you do a wedding and serve corned beef,” Nechama Katz of Elite Caterers in Lawrence put it, “people will laugh. Unless you’re

really rich, and then you can get away with anything.” Quinoa is out, faro is in. Fancy dairy is gaining in popularity, with the availability of kosher bleu, Camembert, Edam and brie. And Jews eat more and more raw fish, despite the government warnings about the dangers of mercury. “If it swims, and had fins and scales,” Chef Alan Kaplan of Prestige Caterers in Queens told me, “Jews will eat it.”
Kaplan suggested that some kosher caterers have tried so hard to impress that they have crossed the line into performance art. “They’re so far out in space, so nouvelle, that no one can decipher the dishes. They serve invisible hors d’oeuvres — there’s nothing on the plate. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes.”
Such theatricality and excess is understandable, perhaps, because New Yorkers tend to get a bit jaded. After all, they travel a lot, eat out a lot, and shop in gourmet food stores. Caterers thus need to keep upping the ante in order to create a memorable experience for celebrants and guests alike.
“If last year you made salmon three ways,” Allan Kurtz of RAM Caterers in Brooklyn and Manhattan told me, “this year you’d better make tuna four ways.” Kosher caterers regularly borrow ideas from other cooks. Pulled pork may be taboo, but pulled veal (with tomatoes and capers) is not. Kurtz has even adapted Wolfgang Puck’s signature barbecue chicken pizza, preparing it with grilled red onions, tomatoes and pesto.
Even 13-year-olds are increasingly sophisticated about food. Karen Lehmann-Eisner, an event planner in Manhattan, says that kids eat much more than hamburgers and hot dogs at their bar and bat mitzvahs. “They eat duck, sushi, chateaubriand,” she said. “They don’t want greasy fries or chicken nuggets any more.”
Caterers also participate in a kind of arms race regarding the amount of food they serve; the more food, the more impressive the affair. At many weddings, the cocktail hour has become the most important part of the evening — more important than the sit-down dinner. As Kurtz put it, people “eat with their eyes” and they want to see a lot of food. In fact, some weddings, such as those of Syrian Jews, may not have sit-down dinners at all; there are often more than 500 guests in attendance, and the meal is served as a succession of “mini meals” from stations.
Beyond making the fare as trendy and copious as possible, caterers often have to invent new twists on old ways of serving it. The frank or “pig” in a blanket has been reincarnated as knockwurst in puff pastry with black sesame seeds on top. And rather than a salad bar, servers at RAM Caterers put mixed greens, grilled chicken, walnuts, red onion and Kalamata olives in a shaker, creating a “shaken” rather than “tossed” salad.
Nowadays, in place of a waiter standing behind a carving board, most caterers use what they call “stations,” which are elevated platforms from which a server hands down individual plates of food. The trend, according to Kurtz, is toward “mini-meals” that might be short ribs with polenta, ginger glazed chicken on a bed of teriyaki noodles, or duck risotto. Instead of a skewer of chicken sate, the guest receives a small plate of peppercorn-crusted sirloin. A “paint your own” station has skewers of meat and a variety of different hued condiments and sauces. A “crudo” (raw fish) table may be set up with bowls of tuna tartare, ground salmon, and ceviche.
As historian Jenna Weissman Joselit told me, Jews have moved on from using simchas to “declare their modernity or American-ness,” and now use them to “showcase their affluence.” Thus the presentation becomes just important as the food, with ribbons on the backs of the chairs and a lighting designer — not just for the bride and groom, but for the guests as well.
Linens, flowers, tableware and furniture, all of which are often orchestrated by a wedding planner, also need to be as eye-catching as possible. Even the color of the plates is important to some clients, who want their function to be the highest aesthetic experience possible. Contemporary wedding cakes come in all shapes, designs and colors; they are also often adorned with real flowers, in addition to the hand-made flowers that are part of the cake itself. And at bar and bat mitzvahs a chocolatier is on hand to craft a fresh, custom-made dessert for each guest.
Some couples have recoiled from the glitz, preferring a more low-key celebration. When Roberta Roberts’ daughter, Sara, got married last summer at the Water’s Edge in Long Island City, she was, according to her mother, “more easy-going” about the arrangements, spending her time creating a silk chupah and watercolor invitations.
“What was meaningful to her was the ceremony,” her mother said. “She felt that it was conventional enough to be getting married in the first place; she didn’t need anything unconventional in terms of the wedding.” Guests had a standard choice of duck, fish or steak, with cold cuts at the cocktail hour.
Others look for unusual types of food, like kosher barbecue. Geoff Kouris, who lives in Fairfield, N.J., is helping his son prepare for his wedding this fall at a carousel on the boardwalk in New Haven, Conn. The wedding feast will be catered by Smokey Joe’s Kosher Tex-Mex Restaurant in Teaneck, which is co-owned by Joseph Godin of the catering company Kosher Creations. Empanadas and hot wings will be served during the cocktail hour, with dinner choices of ribs, brisket, barbecued chicken, chili, and chicken gumbo. Instead of klezmer, a funk band will be playing.
“They want a blow-out on the beach without being constrained by traditional wedding format,” Kooris said. “Just because you’re kosher doesn’t mean you can’t do something different.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization