Kosher kitchens
It’s 67th Ave. in Forest Hills for delicious knishes, oodles of strudel & gobs of kebabs
The 67th Ave. stop on the M line is in Forest Hills, long home to one of the city’s largest Jewish populations. There are also many restaurants, like these three, that are certified kosher. And they’re all worth a trip from anywhere in the city.
Hot potato
Manhattan textile designer Haig Schneiderman decided in 2003 that his second career would be knishes, buying Queens’ celebrated Knish Nosh from its owner who was retiring after more than 50 years.
Now Schneiderman helps keep a New York City food icon alive with help from chef Ana Vasilescu.
Along with the hefty, handrolled potato cakes ($3) that made the place famous, Vasilescu has added traditional Eastern European specialties like beautiful potato pierogies slathered with fried onions (small, $2.50), and fluffy matzo balls in golden chicken soup ($5 for a 16-ounce tub), served with a slice of homemade bread topped with pumpkin seeds.
For those who don’t frequent Forest Hills, you’re in luck. Schneiderman and Vasilescu also supply a Knish Nosh kiosk near the sailboat pond in Central Park.
Knish Nosh: 100-30 Queens Blvd., at 67th Road, Queens; (718) 897-4456.
Better babka
When Rose Heimann opened
Andre’s Hungarian Bakery in 1976, there were dozens of similar eateries on the Upper East Side, where Heimann had worked for the famous Mrs. Herbst’s. Today her shop, named after her son who now runs it with his wife Gabriella, is likely the last Hungarian g bakery y in i the h city.
It would be destination-worthy even if it weren’t, thanks to the from-scratch sweets made under Gabriella’s supervision. The bakery peels crates of apples for flaky strudels ($14 per half-loaf) made with real butter and pastry rolled by hand; forms s wonderful bite-size rugelach stuffed with currants, fruit and spices ($16 a pound); and bakes s some of the city's best babkas in n round, bundt-shaped pans, loadding the soft, buttery bread with nuts and spices or shards of Belgian chocolate ($12).
The Heimanns also operate a full-service Hungarian restaurant on Second Ave. in Yorkville, where in addition to babkas, strudel and other hard-to-find sweets like Sachertorte made in Queens, you can sample goulash, chicken paprikash and stuffed cabbage.
Andre’s Hungarian Bakery: 100-28 Queens Blvd., near 67th Road, Queens; (718) 830-0266.
Kebab cuisine
Tajikistan native Solomon Moses worked as a computer programmer for years, until he saw how much his in-laws loved running Salute, one of the city’s most respected Central Asian restaurants. With h their blessing, he decided to open his own.
Though his first st kitchen was in Brooklyn, rooklyn Moses eventually moved just down the road from his in-laws three years ago, naming his new place Stix Kosher Restaurant after the long, charcoal-griddled kebabs served in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The kebabs here — try the lula, made of ground beef, lamb and onion ($13.95) — are just the beginning. There are delicate housemade samsa ($2.50), or lamb and onion-stuffed baked meat pies, and larger wok-fried versions called chebureki ($2), plus all manner of fresh salads, i including achikc chuk, a platter of thinly sliced tom tomato, onion and groun ground red pepper, and the coolin cooling, colorful Stix salad, a Moses invention made of lightly pickled cabbage, kirby cucumbers, scallions, tomato, carrot and dill.
Moses also offers classics from Israel, Turkey and Ukraine, such as a super-smoky, creamy baba ganoush and paprika-dusted hummus (both $5.50). If you order tea, it’ll come with Moses’ own blackberry and cantaloupe jams.
Stix Kosher Restaurant: 10115 Queens Blvd., at 102nd Road, Queens; (718) 275-5566.
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