”There’s nothing to match this in New York – nothing even similar.” Eli Goldman is a frum foodie from New York who thinks nothing of jumping on a plane to sample an eaterie in Paris. This time though he’s raving about a kosher restaurant in Hendon.
With a group of friends he flew into London en route to a safari in South Africa. The friends had three hours for a meal. They went straight to north west London and the back garden of lawyer Andrew Krausz’s suburban home where he’s built his restaurant The Fire Place.
Krausz says they were bemused when their fleet of luxury minibuses rolled up at his unassuming Hendon residential street. “They told me, ‘this is not Mayfair, this is not the City – are we picking up a helicopter from here?’”
But any doubts they may have harboured vanished when they went inside. Krausz attracts diners from all over Europe for the eight-course epicurean extravaganzas he stages in his tiny part-time restaurant, built at the bottom of his garden.
“We went there, and we we were really, taken aback,” said Goldman. “It’s unique and interesting. All the fish had a story, which was nice. We’re all, most of us, are big fish people,and his raw fish was incredible, his cooked fish was was also very nice.
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“And he had this thing there – I think it was called a Scotch Egg. None of us had ever tasted one before. It was very interesting how it could be done both cooked and raw at the same time.” Krausz’s signature Scotch Egg is coated in spiced beef with the egg hidden inside retaining a soft, runny yolk.
“Overall, the ambiance, the wine selection and the attention that he gives to all the food and the love, which is something which it may exist in the kitchen in America, but you don’t feel it when you walk into a restaurant. So it’s a very unique experience.” said Goldman.
The all-male group hired internationally famous Chasidic singer Shloime Gertner to perform while they ate. “They were up and dancing during the meal.” said Krausz. “ At the end they told me there is nothing like this in New York and they wish that there was. There was almost an envy that we’ve got something they don’t have.” The party guests included a billionaire businessman who used his time in London to stage several meetings in the upstairs dining area while his friends partied downstairs.
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Ordinarily seats at Krausz’s gourmet events, which take place once or twice a month (“depending on my work schedule and chagim”) are snapped up faster than Taylor Swift tickets.“I open the bookings online and in around a minute they’re gone,” explains the father-of-two.
He started staging these events in 2023 having completed an intricately designed rebuild of a former bomb shelter. He told the JC then: “This is my downtime — my idea of a break is doing something I enjoy doing. But it’s not about me and my ego. I love doing it but there’s a serious side to the kosher scene worldwide. People have been focused on the economics of the restaurant rather than doing the best that can be done. And there’s been a view that there’s no market for it.”
The Fire Place comprises a basement wine cellar housing around 3,000 bottles of kosher wine and whisky, and a long dining table plus the upstairs kitchen and dining area with a further 25 seats. Krausz, who describes his epicurean efforts as a “passion project gone rogue”, says he’s proud of the reputation he’s built in two years: “It’s a revalidation and a reinforcement that that I’m doing what I want to be doing, which is making people happy and giving them something that they can’t have or won’t have elsewhere.”
Goldman agreed: “There’s nothing to match this in New York – nothing even similar.”
Instagram: @bluesmokemeat
