The Mecca of contemporary kosher dining, the city – now blessed with a thick scrum of Jewish refugees who fled the failures and bigotries of New York – spent the last decade or so growing a kosher scene that looked like nothing American Jews had seen before.
For one thing, Miami offers real variety, understanding that kosher-eaters aren’t content to live on pita bread alone. Side by side with the traditional offerings of grilled meats, salatim, and other Israeli staples that still dominate the kosher eating scene everywhere else, the city now offers a hungry Jew anything from a terrific Provencal fish Velouté (Maison Ostrow) to chicken and waffles in chili maple syrup (Street Kitchen) to a delicious guava and cheese pastelito (Zak the Baker).
The same diversity applies also to the bill, because Miami’s kosher restaurateurs understand that going out to eat shouldn’t be a binary exercise of choosing between fastish, affordable grub and pricey haute cuisine. Sometimes, you just want to meet a few friends for some lovely appetisers, a shared entrée, and a round of refreshing cocktails, a perfectly normal human craving previously completely ignored by the proprietors of all things kosher.
But the real gospel coming out of Miami’s kosher kitchens isn’t utilitarian—it’s spiritual. And to truly understand it, you need to know a little bit about the city’s arguably most successful eating venture, Motek.
Motek in Miami[Missing Credit]
With nine locations in Miami and four more recently opened in Brooklyn and Manhattan, Motek is the sort of place that welcomes you with bright yellow walls, a frozen rosé made with kosher wine and topped with peaches and strawberries, and a boisterous Mediterranean menu. The music is loud, the service is cheerful, and the food is terrific, which explains the chain’s rapid growth. But here’s the thing: while the meat served in Motek is all glatt kosher, the restaurant is not technically kosher certified. It’s open on Shabbat, and though no one dish combines meat and dairy, any diner who so wishes may order a side of tzatziki next to her schnitzel.
To the more observant among us, these aberrations make Motek a non-starter. But for many more Jews, the chain offers a meaningful alternative, welcoming in a growing population of Jews who would never eat non-kosher meat but who are delighted with a place that serves kosher fare without some of the strictures they don’t abide by anyway.
Motek, in other words, opens up a whole new space in kosher dining, a space that is warmly traditional if not strictly adhering to halachah, or Jewish law. It’s a space Jews from Petach Tikvah to Palm Beach know all too well: Everywhere you look these days, you see more and more Jews identifying as Masorti, or traditional, celebrating the beauty and the meaning of Judaism even if they don’t always follow its commandments. In recent decades, this spirit has completely transformed Israeli society, inspiring, if not always outright religiosity, then at least a robust wave of renewed interest in traditional texts and practices. And now, courtesy of eateries like Motek, it’s making its way stateside, too.
And that is a very, very good thing.
It doesn’t take a rabbi to know that the American denominational system is in freefall. Non-Orthodox groups like Conservative and Reform Judaism are rapidly losing congregants, many of whom are searching for more—here comes that word again—traditional alternatives, which is why groups like Chabad are everywhere growing exponentially. But a traditional Chabad House on campus or Chabad shul down the block isn’t always enough to sustain Jewish life; for that, you need gathering places that offer American Jews ways to reconcile both sides of their hyphenated identities, delivering experiences that are both pleasurable and meaningful. Few establishments can do this better than restaurants, and now we’ve a Michelin star to attest to the fact that, at least in Miami, we’re learning how to do it well.
