Only if I look strange, American girl that I am, coming for stuffed peppers and “blintches” and mashed potatoes with tzimmes
Illustration: Dov-Ber Cohen
If I left my house at seven, I could get to Koritz ahead of my husband and order before he got there. He would slide in after second seder and gratefully bend over his soup while I would look around, taking in the sights and sounds of the post-seven o’clock crowd at this Geulah eatery. There were the usual American yeshivah bochurim, jackets slung over their arms as they asked for the standard schnitzel with two sides. Sometimes there was a flat-hatted Yerushalmi, playing with his beard as he selected something more exotic — a piece of moussaka, liver and onions, maybe some meat roulada if he was feeling indulgent. You could expect to encounter the middle-aged couple visiting from the US — the young ones didn’t come to Koritz — pulling out their American Yiddish as they pointed to the chicken mit kartofel. And then there was the other breed, the steady fixtures in the store, slower walking, slower moving, there for their dose of cholent, Hamodia, and Pepsi.
For the record, Coca-Cola has a fine, upstanding hechsher, and graces fine, upstanding tables in Yerushalayim. But it isn’t Badatz, and this eatery is. That alone might tell you what else this place is, and also what it isn’t.
I never have to worry if I look good enough to be seen. Only if I look strange, American girl that I am, coming for stuffed peppers and “blintches” and mashed potatoes with tzimmes.
Maybe I’m a gilgul of a girl from Cracow, or Chernowitz, or Lemberg. Or maybe I just grew up with good Jewish cooking, and I appreciate food that is clean, wholesome, and made with respect, both for the food and for the people eating it. A piece of chicken is recognizably a piece of chicken. The soup leaves no neon rim around your bowl. There is no parched-throat feeling four hours later, like you get from Chinese takeout. At Koritz, nothing tastes like it’s collided with a tanker full of soup mix, or soy sauce, or chili matok.
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