Kosher restaurants are a conundrum for me. I want to embrace them because of my Jewish heritage, but I also really want to mix dairy and meat, or throw in some bacon. But, Kosher restaurants have figured out a way to make the food palatable and I went to Kitchen18 in Scottsdale to find out just how palatable they could be.

It didn’t take much time for me to settle upon the Pastrami Burger.. Although I must say that the massive Chinese menu was intriguing (Jews and the Chinese have a long, rich history). The burger was topped with the aforementioned pastrami and “friend” onion. The fried (yes, friend was a typo) onion wasn’t like onion rings or anything, so I passed on them. I had a choice of two sides, and opted for Cajun curly fries and steak fries because that’s how I roll.

The burger was a thing of beauty. Just look at that burger up above. It was massive, it was sexy, and it was still somehow not topped with cheese or bacon. Interestingly, the burger had been seasoned with a number of ingredients, including lemon. This was only a bad thing when I found a seed, but otherwise the various flavors were fantastic. The pastrami, however, could have been a little better. It was kind of dry and kind of tough, but undoubtedly the best topping a Kosher restaurant could have produced for a burger. The fries were great companions to the burger, although I am always partial to curly fries and these delivered.

Kitchen18 definitely did what it had to do and likely produced one of the most beautiful burgers I have ever photographed. But it was also a $19 burger, which is kind of a crazy price to pay for a burger when you don’t keep Kosher. So, I’ll keep Kitchen18 in mind for next time I need to please the lord almighty, but until then I will continue to seek out places that will happily melt some cheese on top of my beef.

Who doesn’t love a good pun? Or even better, who doesn’t love an awesome compound word. Combining giant and enormous gave us ginormous. Combining lion and tiger gave us liger. And combining terrible and institution gave us Ohio State University (yes, I know that is technically three words, but I stand by it). Now joining the ever-growing list of compound words is a restaurant named MexiKosher in (surprisingly) Pico-Robertson. I love a good compound word as much as the next guy, but could this new Kosher Mexican restaurant make a happy unvegan? I intended to find out.

The set up of the place is pretty awkward and we we walked in we had no idea where to order or who to order from. Eventually, we found our way to someone willing to help us out. It seemed they were trying to do things the Chipotle way, without pork or cheese, but still hadn’t gotten the organizational efficiency together.

Of course, as an American, I lamented the lack of cheese. Jew or not, I expect cheese on my Mexican food. To those who know true Mexican food, however, the lack of cheese should not have been surprising. Few Mexican dishes actually involve cheese, so I was still excited. What didn’t excite me, though, was the price. The cheapest meat offered clocked in at 10.99 for a dish.

I chose one of these 10.99 dishes, the grilled chicken tacos. This came with three tacos and my selection of toppings, which I simply limited to guacamole (an extra 75 cents) and cilantro. They were incredibly generous with the guac and I ended up with guacamole tacos with a bit of meat in each. I also got some beans and rice in my family picnic-style divided plate. Then, at check out, we discovered something amazing. Checking in on Facebook resulted in a 20% discount. Now I don’t do that Facebook check-in stuff to remain incognito (just don’t ask me about foursquare), but my buddy checked in and we piggybacked his discount.

We snagged a table and I went to work devouring the tacos. What I found was pretty delicious. These weren’t some sort of Jewish fusion, but simply tacos prepared with delicious Kosher meat. The chicken was moist, with a hint of citrusy goodness, and then there were the crazy sauces offered. These sat near the register in condiment bottles, keeping the place unique compared to your ordinary Mexican salsa bars. These bottles changed the game in two ways: 1) No more accidentally mixing salsas with an unsteady ladle and 2) they could be easily shaken up to ensure even distribution of flavor. I tried a few of them and found each to be pretty tasty and creative. The Chipotle Marmalade and Serrano Aioli were definitely my two favorites.

Yet, as delicious as this all was, I realized that I couldn’t justify the price of Kosher. Not when I could walk down the street or stroll up to a taco truck and get a similarly tasty Mexican meal for half the price.

Mexikosher is certainly a good addition to Pico-Robertson. For those who keep Kosher, it certainly provides the necessary taste. But for the treif in this world, MexiKosher is probably only worth a dabble.

On my way home from the bar one night, I was unsurprisingly jonesing for some grub. The trouble was that I was driving through the area of Pico and Robertson, which isn’t exactly known to be a late-night food hub. But just when I thought my snack options were going to be limited to whatever leftovers I could find in my fridge, I saw a shiny beacon of hope that seemed to be a food truck. When I pulled over to explore, I found that although not exactly a truck, I had stumbled upon some sort of mobile food purveyor. It was called Kosher Grill on Wheels and a schwarma sounded like heaven to me (and with any luck, eating Kosher would bring me one step closer to that heaven).

I’m not sure how much food they had to offer, because all I really saw was that spinning spool of schwarma meat. I ordered one and watched as the sliced off bits of chicken and tossed them on the griddle for further heating. While waiting for the griddle, they asked me what kind of wrap I wanted and what I wanted in it. The choice of wraps were pita for 7 bucks and laffa for 8. I was a bit surprised by the high prices, but that’s the price you pay for Kosher, so I figured at that point I may as well go with the laffa. As for inside the wrap, there were mostly vegetables, but there was also hummus, tahina sauce and a spicy sauce. I asked for all of these and the guy slathered them on the laffa as we waited for the chicken.

When it was done, he wrapped it all up, sliced it in half and threw it in a bag for me. I headed home ready to chow down on some Jewish meat.

I opened it up and it smelled great, but was a bit small for the 8 dollar price tag. Nonetheless, eight bucks would be a small price to pay for late-night pleasure. Unfortunately, pleasure wasn’t all I got from this schwarma. Although the chicken and sauces were delicious and well-seasoned, every few bites I would find some bit of chicken I couldn’t bit through. It wasn’t hard enough to be bone, but whatever it was, it was unwelcome in my mouth. I would have to spit out these pieces for fear of busting a tooth or choking and that made me feel sad. I really thought Kosher Grill on Wheels could do better, especially for the price. It may have been Kosher, but if that’s the kind of meat they are slinging then treif sounds much better.

When some Kosher cousins of mine came to visit LA, it was time for me to pay another visit to Pico and Robertson, also known as Little Israel. Once again, it would have been a waste to go to a Kosher place on the dairy end of the spectrum, so we went to Pico Kosher Deli to get some meat going. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get meat without topping it with a cheese of some sort, but the deli had something interesting to top their meat, while still staying Kosher.

This topping was pastrami and I found it upon The Deli Burger. This burger with fries was only $7.95 and all Kosher. I ordered it without lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle and got ready for some Kosher meat on meat action. My burger came and looked just perfect. Not a veggie in site.

Despite the pastrami, I was worried that this burger just couldn’t be good without cheese, but I was wrong. The pastrami added a delicious taste to this burger and was more of a substitute for bacon than it was for cheese. Nonetheless, the pastrami gave the burger an entirely new dimension. The beef itself was also delicious. There seems to be something about Kosher meat that just tastes so much better than regular meat, and this was no different with The Deli Burger. The fries were just normal, but they were good enough to go along with a burger that has opened my eyes to a world away from cheesy bacon burgers.

This year I got biblical for Valentine’s Day. No, not like that you sicko. Instead of having a boring, fancy meal with my girlfriend, we decided to get cooking. And not just any kind of cooking, we decided to use Lobel’s Meat Bible, which was sent to me by Chronicle Books a few months ago for free. I knew this book would be incredible just based on the cover, but the back cover really sealed the deal for me because it says, “Armed with Lobel’s Meat Bible, carnivores will find themselves with more delectable meaty choices than ever before.” Mmmm meaty choices.

It would be a disservice to call this book a recipe book, as it carries loads of information about our most common meats like beef and chicken, but also delves into game meats and organ meats. All of this information coupled with the recipes makes this a true unvegan bible. After a quick flip through the pages of the bible, I found the perfect Valentine’s Day meal: Carbonade of Beef in Belgian Beer. I must admit that the beer was the first thing that caught my eye and after a quick glance at the ingredients, the girlfriend and I decided this would be grand.

Since the recipe was coming from a bible and the feast was in celebration of St. Valentine, we decided to balance out the obvious Christian undertones of our meal by buying Kosher ingredients (to see the full list of ingredients and recipe, see image at the bottom of the page. The recipe was made to serve 6 people, so we toned down the ingredients a bit in the hopes that we could still cook the meal correctly.

Then we began following the recipe. Duvel was my Belgian ale of choice, and I hoped that using it for a recipe would be even better than drinking it. I won’t get into all the details on how to prepare this dish, but suffice to say, it started out with a whole lot of meat. About 40 minutes into preparing the meat and the other ingredients, I reached a part of the recipe that made my mouth drop. It read: “Cover and cook at the barest possible simmer for 3-4 hours. Wait what? This sounded insane to me, but apparently it wasn’t.

So our romantic Valentine’s dinner became a late-night feast, but it was so worth it.

When the three hours were up and the carbonade was ready, it was an amazing dish. The beef was so tender and flavorful, packed with Duvel’s flavoring, along with the other yummy ingredients. The only thing that was disappointing was that we hadn’t prepared something to accompany it. The recipe said it would go nice with potatoes, but when we started eating, we realized that the dish would go even better with something like rice or couscous. Nonetheless, it was quite the dish, quite the Valentine’s Day and it showed the the Lobels know quite a lot about their meat.

Check out Lobel’s Meat Bible yourself and have a meaty existence.

As a Jew who clearly doesn’t keep Kosher (see any entry on bacon, cheeseburgers or shellfish), I sometimes find it fun to eat a meal the way my Kosher brethren do. In LA this means a trip to Pico and Robertson, which my girlfriend affectionately calls “Little Israel,” although actual Israel can hardly be called “big.” Kosher restaurants either serve meat or dairy, so to take care of my unvegan needs, this Kosher pilgrimage took me to the meat-based Haifa Restaurant.

Haifa serves traditional Middle-Eastern foods like schwarma and kebabs, which is nice since you wouldn’t really want to put cheese or other dairy foods with them. I perused the pita sandwiches and decided the Fried Schnitzel sounded just delightful. When I ordered, I asked what came inside the sandwich and the waitress told me it was the schnitzel, hummus and salad. Actually, that was what came in all their sandwiches, so instead of choosing something different, I just ordered it without and hoped there would be enough schnitzel and hummus to fill the thing.

Before my sandwich came, the waitress brought out a bunch of different miniature side dishes. This was all good and well for the veggie munching crowd, but there wasn’t anything to offer for unvegans. Oh well, it was a little bonus that I hadn’t been expecting anyway and it kept the rest of the table happy. Suckers.

My pita sandwich came and looked perfect. Not a vegetable in sight. I chomped in and found it pretty enjoyable. The combination of breaded chicken with pita was a nice double dose of carbs that I always appreciate and the hummus helped keep it moist. If anything, this could have used a bit more hummus, but it was pretty good as is. The meat was actually pretty awesome and was definitely the quality I expect from Kosher meat. Of course, this came at the somewhat premium cost of $8.95. Yet, the premium wasn’t huge when you consider the cost of some sandwiches in LA that don’t even adhere to strict ethical and religious codes.

When I first heard the name of Jeff’s Kosher Gourmet Sausage Factory, I was quite thrown off. It’s not often you hear the words Kosher and sausage in the same sentence. Usually the closest you get is Best’s Kosher Hot Dogs. Needless to say, it was with great excitement that I approached this Kosher sausage fairyland.

A quick look at the menu showed me a lot of dishes with vegetables, so I had a hard time deciding which one would be the best without the said veggies. Hoping to get a glowing sausage recommendation, I asked the guy at the counter what the best thing on the menu was, and he told me it was the hamburger. This was a little disappointing, as I knew the burger could have neither cheese nor bacon on it. It was also disappointing since he didn’t mention a sausage. So, in a rush, I chose their special of the day, the buffalo chicken sandwich. It came with lettuce, tomatoes and onions, so I asked for it without and also got fries and a drink.

It came just as I had ordered, perfectly Kosher, with no extra vegetables. The chicken patty was nice and crunchy and the buffalo sauce was pretty spicy. I wouldn’t have minded have used some cheese, but I could never expect such a thing from a Kosher Sausage Factory.