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Kosher GPS Restaurant App for Smartphones


Pool Boy

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I have a new coworker that is a remote worker in visiting the office for the first time. Keeps kosher. Apparently there are smartphone apps that tell you what restaurants are nearby your location that are kosher. That is probably a pretty handy app to have for those that do that.

Who knew?

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Apparently there are more than you think. The hard thing I would imagine is getting breakfast. Or any packaged or processed food.

To your point, I did only just learn from one of these threads (it was DanielK but can't recall which thread--maybe this one above) about Brooklyn's Deli in Potomac, which is top of my list now since never new it existed and Daniel calls it the "best corned beef [he] has ever had" or something like that from one who isn't typically hyperbolic.  Whether or not Brooklyn's in Kosher and thus app eligible is unknown to me.

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Brooklyn's is a NY-style deli, but not kosher. Best corned beef HASH.

There are a VERY limited number of actual kosher restaurants in the DC area, which given the size of the Jewish population, shows how really hard it is to operate a profit when you are closed on Friday night and all of Saturday.

By my count, not including cafes inside kosher markets, museums, bakeries, bagel/donut shops, etc., but only actual restaurants, there are probably only 5 in the entire DC area, all of them in MoCo:

  • Ben Yehuda (Silver Spring)
  • Blue Star (Rockville)
  • Cafe Shawreen (Rockville)
  • Max's (Wheaton)
  • Nut House Pizza (Wheaton)
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Brooklyn's is a NY-style deli, but not kosher. Best corned beef HASH.

There are a VERY limited number of actual kosher restaurants in the DC area, which given the size of the Jewish population, shows how really hard it is to operate a profit when you are closed on Friday night and all of Saturday.

By my count, not including cafes inside kosher markets, museums, bakeries, bagel/donut shops, etc., but only actual restaurants, there are probably only 5 in the entire DC area, all of them in MoCo:

  • Ben Yehuda (Silver Spring)
  • Blue Star (Rockville)
  • Cafe Shawreen (Rockville)
  • Max's (Wheaton)
  • Nut House Pizza (Wheaton)

This is exactly what I suspected and why I made the post upthread joking about a Kosher app.  I wasn't sure but trust Daniel on this.

Apparently there is a BBQ place in 'North Bethesda' that (according to this app) is kosher. Is that Blue Star?

What the hell do you do about breakfast if you are kosher?

Make it at home? Or, work around the restrictions somehow? I'm going to ask some kosher friends about this and will report back. I'm not well versed on keeping Kosher. But, I do know people who are and I hate when Max's is closed and I'm at Friday or Saturday games at Nats Park.   ;)

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Daniel will know more than I, but from experience in trying to find a Kosher place to send food to a grieveing family, the Kosher caterers are also few and far between. We ended up using Shalom Market. But that was many years ago, and there may be a few more caterers out there now.

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So, I have now put this question to a very credible expert. One whose credentials no one here would impugn but hopefully you'll take my word for it since I can't identify this expert more specifically without permission that I do not have.

My expert laments the abysmal state (my paraphrase) of Kosher options in the District with "worse in the suburbs" and just a few "further out" in "Rockville, Wheaton" and the like. This more or less aligns with the specifics posted upthread. In DC proper, my expert identified only two:

"- CharBar ( http://charbardc.com/ ) on L Street "” a kosher, so-so meat-heavy place that really doesn't do breakfast, and opens at 11am. More for burgers, steaks, etc. Not great, but that's the story of kosher in DC.

- The "Silver Crust" dairy pizza place now operating in the lobby (how's THAT for ambiance?!) of the DCJCC on 16th Street. ( http://washingtondcjcc.org/jspaces/cafe/homepage.html )"

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CharBar I think is the cafe inside Eli's market? And Silver Crust is inside the DCJCC as you pointed out. I specifically excluded the cafes inside markets, museums, JCCs, etc. (and didn't include caterers) - I was highlighting standalone restaurants.

But I will object to Rockville and Wheaton being classified as "further out" than the suburbs. Both are just outside the beltway.

FWIW, until a few years ago, many Dunkin Donuts locations were kosher (or eligible, if they contracted locally for supervision). But then corporate forced nearly all locations to carry breakfast meat, and most locations lost their certification. None left in the DC area. They even closed an outlet in the Rockville JCC because of it.

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