The New Shul’s Rosh Hashanah Service
CEO, East Village
Musician, Clinton Hill
Have you known Rabbi Misha long? He’s brand new; this was his first service. He was calm and kind, and it was a nourishing experience to be with him and his musicians.
Clinical psychologist, Guilford, Connecticut
Musician, Prospect–Lefferts Gardens
Artist, Carroll Gardens
Bike valet and Census-taker, Bed-Stuy
What was the best part of the evening?
I will start with the cake. I of course love the community, but someone brought a cake—it was a saffron-olive cake with pine nuts. It was the highlight of my service.
Artist and designer, West Village
Filmmaker and yoga instructor, Dumbo
Architect, Long Island City
Is the New
Shul your normal synagogue? Usually, we go to a temple near our apartment in Chelsea, but I heard about this and knew my daughter and I had to go. I’m a single parent, out of work, and we don’t have a car, so we had to take the train and the bus and the LIRR to get here. It was worth it: It was a golden, golden evening.
Massage therapist, Chelsea
Student, Carroll Gardens
Editor, Crown Heights
The city’s Open Restaurants initiative has been extended permanently and year-round. Here’s how to make the most of it. delicately tangy mix of seaweed, uni, and salmon eggs appeared after that, followed by a selection of sashimi (maguro, mackerel, and sweet scallops finished with yuzu) elegantly laid out, just like old times, on a block of black slate. The seven-piece nigiri selection was professionally done and even a relative bargain for the price, although if you enjoy consuming your omakase dinner in silent contemplation, book a table for later in the evening, when the rushhour traffic has thinned and there aren’t so many police choppers hovering overhead.
There weren’t any choppers in the sky above (17 W. 20th St., nr. Fifth Ave.) when I sat down to dinner at one of the wooden tables that had been set up on the sidewalk under a canopy of coffee-colored parasols. The chef, Hiroki Odo, had “pivoted” away from the set-course experience, our server explained, but we were free to create our own omakase, which began with a variety of top-grade sashimi served on two round wooden trays. There were skewers of perfectly fried soft-shell crab after that (“No one deep-fries like this at home,” my guest intoned) and a selection of uni from the famous sea-urchin regions of Japan (Hokkaido, Miyagi), which caused my guest to close his eyes in a rapturous way, like a teetotaler tasting his first martini in a long time. As the sun set over the empty street and more dishes arrived (traditional onigiri toasted over the charcoal grill, more skewers, a helping of late-summer-corn porridge dressed with bits of unagi), we agreed that the open-air omakase had its charms, and it would probably be a long time before we ever set foot in a stuffy, cramped, indoor omakase room again.