Pizza war’s unorthodox end
In a city as pizza-crazed as New York, pizza wars erupt with some regularity, from dollar slice joints battling for customers in Manhattan to a Mafia-tinted dispute over a stolen sauce recipe between a pizza shop in Brooklyn and another on Staten Island.
But perhaps nothing compares to a kosher pizza war, pitting 21st-century foodie-ism against the decidedly 19th-century world of an insular Hasidic neighbourhood.
Two pizza restaurant owners, both Orthodox Jews, have become entangled in an only-in-Brooklyn lawsuit, not in an august courthouse, but in an obscure hall of justice known as the Rabbinical Court of Borough Park, which hears cases in a simple room above a synagogue on a residential block.
At the centre of the battle are not prices or sauce recipes, but cryptic interpretations of holy law set down in ancient Aramaic thousands of years ago. Both sides have invoked rules dictated by the Torah and the Talmud, as well as a cookbook’s worth of interpretations of kosher rules and certification standards.
At one table, the plaintiff: Daniel Branover, an owner of Basil Pizza & Wine Bar, a popular upscale kosher restaurant in Crown Heights that opened in 2010 and offers specialty pies as a menu staple.
At another table, the defendant: Shemi Harel, who this month opened Calabria, a pizza shop directly across the street from Basil.
With its graffiti-style decor and casual, pay-at-thecounter dining, Calabria is very different from sleek, modern Basil, where weekend diners often wait two hours for a table.
The case provides a window into a merchants’ dispute rarely heard in rabbinical courts, vestiges of a religious legal system established in ancient times and prevalent today in Orthodox communities as an alternative to the civil court system.
The pizza ruling was issued in mere days, in Hebrew, with certain citations of the Torah and the Talmud in ancient Aramaic.
The rabbis sided largely with Branover, finding that Calabria was so close both geographically and in food style that it jeopardized Basil’s livelihood. Calabria was told to switch to offering “regular pizza,” which the court defined as “New York-style pizza,” though it did not provide any further guidance.
To follow the court’s New York-style pizza edict, Harel said, he searched online for the best dough recipe that fit the bill. He quickly revised Calabria’s website to call its pizza “New York-style.” But he continued to sell rectangular slices. Branover accused Calabria of making nominal changes in a cynical attempt to flout the ruling. He is prepared, he said, to file a civil suit, using the rabbis’ ruling as leverage.
Harel said that Jewish law regarding competition applies only to merchants in the same profession, and that this case is different because Branover owns a profitable energy management company, Satec.
“It’s not his business, it’s his hobby,” said Harel, 28. He called Branover a wealthy man “who got his ego hurt.”
Branover said, “It doesn’t matter how much money I have, the law applies to the business, not the businessman.”