Best eats of 2024: kosher, Jew-ish and cracking cookbooks

This has been the year of the New York bagel. Absolutely not the beigel.

Although the American imports are not new to our shores, the past 12 months has seen their cultural presence rise at a rate.

American Dan Martensen added two more branches of It’s Bagels – in Notting Hill and Soho. In Mayfair, Kleinsky’s opened its doors in June, baking its own versions of the chewy, savoury snack.

For those unaware, Kleinsky’s is an iconic Cape Town deli now doing a brisk trade on exclusive North Audley Street with a range of flavours and schmears plus its own filling ideas, such as the California: smoked salmon, wasabi cream cheese, avocado, soya reduction and pickled ginger.

The South African export will be one to watch in 2025, as owner Adam Klein shared with me the warm welcome his eatery has received has meant he and business partner brother Josh are already hoping to expand the operation to include the wider deli menu their brand is known for.

We’ve also seen some fab bagel-inspired fashion, with the Bagel Bakery / High Snobiety collab in Selfridges touting T-shirts, hoodies and caps. Nike’s bagel dunks – produced in association with Montreal’s Fairmount Bagels – were also fun. It’s been a rollercoaster for kosher restaurants with Reubens Café – the milky diner — opening on Baker Street in May while its meaty sibling (a short stroll away) suffered not one but two devastating fires. We’re still waiting to hear when that will reopen.

In the meantime, catering king Tony Page has announced that in January he’ll be moving his kosher fine-dining restaurant from Lancaster Gate to Marylebone, doubling the number of kosher eat-in destinations in the West End.

Down on the south coast, I loved Novellino Brighton’s fresh and flavourful menu, especially its summer barbecue. The shiny, new and spotless kosher accommodation at the city’s Brighton and Hove Jewish Community Centre made it one of my favourite weekends of the year. Looking forward to a return in 2025 to sample Sunday lunch.

One of my favourite chefs, Josh Katz, opened Carmel Fitzrovia – his fourth restaurant this year, serving up his Insta-winning puffy flatbreads and a delicious menu of Middle Eastern/Levantine classics. That meal and one Katz served at the Home Farm outdoor banquet in an inclement July remain two of my best of this year.

When I’ve not been eating out I’ve done plenty of home cooking and it’s been a great year for cookbooks. My new go-to is Tim Spector’s Food for Life, which is packed with easy-to-make healthy recipes. I don’t rely on the same book often, preferring to head to Google when I need a fast fix, but have regularly returned to this one. I’ve also loved the Soup for Good book – a fundraiser for the fantastic social enterprise Cook for Good, a community surplus food pantry that also offers free cooking classes, community meal, training and work experience. Expect great recipes and the joy of giving to their charity when you buy your copy.

Jewish cookbooks that I’ve also loved have included a fabulous Jewish Mexican tome called Sabor Judio from academics Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle, and chef Jeremy Salomon’s tasty (and not always kosher) reinventions of his grandmother’s Hungarian classics, Second Generation. US Jewish food doyenne Joan Nathan published her wonderful recipe memoir My Life in Recipes: Food, Family and Memories. A great read and also packed with delicious food.

A book with a moving message was the Shavuot of Longing: Their Recipes on Our Table book from Foody Israel. A collection of favourite recipes picked by the families of those still held as hostages in Gaza, or those who have lost their lives in the war, funds raised by sales went to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Food has remained a poignant way to remember the victims of October 7 and the ensuing war as well as the hostages, unbelievably still being held over a year later. Particularly heartwrenching are the videos created as part of A Place at the Table. This project shares videos produced by Asif, the Tel Aviv-based Culinary Institute of Israel. In each clip, a family member or friend of a victim remembers them and shares their love while cooking the dish their loved one enjoyed most.

I could not watch a single one without shedding a tear.

And the continuing war has meant that although we’ve celebrated with the same doughnuts and latkes, eaten Rosh Hashanah apples and honey and with marked Shavuot with creamy cheesecakes every festival has felt tinged with sadness.

For more JC Food news in the coming year, sign up for the Let’s Eat weekly newsletter (you’ll find a link on our website) and join my Facebook group – JC Food. Looking forward to tasting 2025.