Rabbi Berel Slavaticki is used to answering questions about faith, forgiveness and spirituality.
He also hears a lot of queries about food.
“People said, ‘I can't get a good bagel around here, I can't get a good falafel.’ So we said, you know, let's try to put something together,” the rabbi said.
Which helps explain why he found himself standing behind the counter of the Brooklyn Café in Newington on a recent weekday morning.
Slavaticki, with the help of volunteers from the Seacoast Chabad Jewish Community Center and a few food professionals, launched the cafe earlier this month. He believes it is the only all-kosher restaurant in New Hampshire.
The menu includes bagels, cream cheeses and lox — “all the way from the Bronx,” Slavaticki said — along with a smattering of pastries, as well as challah, the braided bread that’s a staple on Jewish tables during the Sabbath.
Slavaticki also hired a falafel expert with Israeli roots. There’s coffee and other drinks, as well.
What you won’t find, though, are the Dagwood-sized cold cut sandwiches served at classic New York delicatessens.
“Where's the pastrami sandwich?” Slavaticki says he keeps hearing, having to explain that, as a kosher certified restaurant, the Brooklyn Café follows a set of Jewish laws related to food that includes no mixing of meat and dairy products.
But what is on the menu seems to be enough for New Hampshire residents in search of a good nosh.
“You got to have bagels,” said Denise Pressinger of Newmarket, who was about to tuck into a lox and cream cheese on sesame seed. “I mean, they do everything: The bagels, the challah, the rugelach. You can't get it anywhere. So this is perfect.”
The bagels themselves are also technically imports, according to Slavaticki. They arrive par-boiled from New York, and then are finished on sight in Newington.
“I don't know what the myth is about the water in New York,” he says.
While the offerings may be kosher, the restaurant itself looks and feels like any other newly constructed space, with a dash of neon, a soda case and plenty of tables. For the café to be sustainable, Slavaticki says they’ll need to attract a lot of non-Jewish residents.
“That's what we see so far, which is great to see the outpouring of love,” he says.
The Brooklyn Café is structured as a nonprofit, with proceeds intended to benefit the local community.
At a table by the window, Marty Fuerst of Dover and her son Isaac shared a kosher pizza. They’re Jewish, but don’t typically seek out kosher food outside of Passover.
“We try to keep kosher a little bit,” she says. ”We're not all the way there yet, but it's one of those, like, you always try to do a little bit more than you're already doing. So this helps.”
In accordance with Jewish law, the Brooklyn Café closes early on Friday afternoons and doesn’t reopen until Sunday.
Otherwise, the bagels are rolling the rest of the week.
