Manhattan Kosher Map: Behind the Scenes & FAQ
Curious about why some restaurants are included and others aren’t, or how vegan/vegetarian restaurants are grilled about whether or not they serve meat? Read on.
The Manhattan Kosher Map is an interactive map of certified kosher, vegan, and vegetarian restaurants in New York City’s most densely populated borough. More info on how to use the map is available here.
Why is it called the Kosher Map if it includes restaurants that aren’t certified kosher?
When I initially built the map, it was intended as a way for me to find restaurants where I personally would be comfortable eating. However, there are many ways to practice Judaism and many different approaches to the laws of kashrut. There are also many schools of thought when making food decisions in general. That’s why I’ve tried to make it easy to show and hide each layer.
There are lots of potential issues that come up when eating at a non-certified-kosher vegan or vegetarian restaurant (Note: many certifying agencies will share these issues as a way of proving the need for kosher certification, often in a tone that’s meant to build up a fear of accidentally eating non-kosher food, with a certifying agency coming to the rescue). In my Jewish practice, I’m comfortable eating at such restaurants mainly because that was my family’s practice growing up. I’m not going to provide point-for-point analysis on each of the issues (bishul akum, stam yeinam and maga akum (for both wine and wine vinegars), potential for bugs in vegetables, use of non-certified ingredients, and cheese: gvinat akum and rennet), with one exception:
Marit Ayin
The issue: Wearing a kippah in a non-certified restaurant can give others the impression that the restaurant is certified kosher. My personal practice is to eat at such restaurants (hence their appearance on this list), but I’ll usually wear a hat.
One could argue that including these restaurants in the map at all is a form of marit ayin. I would counter that the map delineates between certified and non-certified restaurants quite clearly, and potential customers who are not comfortable with non-certified restaurants can easily turn off those layers.
How can you be certain that the vegan or vegetarian restaurants don’t serve any meat?
Before I add a non-certified vegan or vegetarian restaurant to the map, I confirm with the restaurant that they don’t have any meat products. In fact, I’ll often inquire at a bakery, for example, about making a custom maple-bacon flavored cupcake or a lard-based pie crust just for me to see if, when incentivized to please the customer, they might offer meat/treif.
Once it’s clear that they don’t have any meat products, I check to confirm that their pots, pans, and dishes don’t make contact with meat. A number of restaurants have been ruled out at this stage, most notably:
- Eleven Madison Park, which recently reopened as a plant-based restaurant (plus milk and honey for tea). They’ve got three Michelin Stars, four stars from The New York Times, and they were ranked the top restaurant in the world in 2017. Dinner (including tip) costs a whopping $335 per person, and they donate five meals for every dinner via rethinkfood.org. Unfortunately, they also have a private dining room and food truck that still serve meat and operate out of the same kitchen as the main dining room.
- Kajitsu, the only completely vegan restaurant in NYC with a Michelin star, shares dishes with their upstairs (meat) sister restaurant. [Note that Kajistu has closed since this post was published]
- A number of otherwise vegan or vegetarian food court restaurants that share dishwashing.
Though it may sound obvious, I want to make it clear that my research into the practices of non-certified vegan and vegetarian restaurants should not be taken as the same thing as a kosher certification. To quote Rabbi Elliott Dorff in his rabbinic ruling on wines:
There is no guarantee… that uncertified wineries will continue to use tomorrow the processes and substances that they attest today; only rabbinic certification provides a measure of continued assurance that such substances are not used.
Rabbinic certification is indeed the best way to ensure that the wines produced by wineries are kosher; I would argue that the same holds true for restaurants in general.
