Kosher Critic: Excellent meat options on Milk Street

The most precious and costly commodity in Manhattan is space. Because of this spatial deficiency, even some of the city’s finest restaurants are no more than glorified nooks. The expense is simply too great for most establishments to maintain, especially in certain neighborhoods where the cost of space borders on excessive. So when I say to you that Milk Street Cafe, the new kosher restaurant located at 40 Wall Street, takes up no less then 23,000 square feet, it should tell you in no uncertain terms how seriously owner Marc Epstein takes the business of building a successful restaurant.

Embodying the “Go big or go home” ethos, Milk Street Cafe opens up to a spacious front end ornamented tastefully with modern sensibilities. The stone floor is intricately decorated, stretching out into 8,000 square feet of equally well-decorated prep stations. These stations offer a vast, almost mind-boggling variety of foods that run the gamut of Cafe style items. Diners can customize pasta, salads, and sandwiches on top of being able to get sushi, bakery, soups, and prepared grill items. What makes Milk Street Cafe truly unique though is not that they offer so many items, it’s that they offer them in both dairy and meat.
Whereas most restaurants need to restrict their menus to either of the two options, Milk Street Cafe has found a way to merge the two modalities of kosher restaurants with an elegant, if not grandiose solution in their prep kitchens.
Stretching out behind Milk Street’s front end are several kitchens, with a combined space that is three times larger than the main dining area. These kitchens are separated by corridors, and each kitchen is distinctly marked by its different color floor tile, which signifies if it is the dairy, meat or parve. When working in these kitchens, the culinary staff wear aprons and hats that is specific to each kitchen. The kitchens themselves are glorious monuments to modern day culinary production. Every bell, whistle, and kitchen appliance you could possibly need is neatly squared away at its corresponding prep station. This allows The Milk Street Cafe to act as a catering company, capable of servicing large corporate events.
What I really liked about the Milk Street Cafe, outside of its dining options, innovative structure, willingness to push the envelope, and the very affable owner, is the food. I highly recommend the peppercorn rubbed roast beef with red peppers and horseradish sauce, and the smoked turkey salad with sun dried tomatoes.  Both these sandwiches are served on wonderfully fresh bread that has a nice crunch crust with a soft interior. To me this is paramount for a good sandwich, and so the combination of the excellent flavors of the meat and the texture of the fresh bread make for one of the better sandwiches available in New York. A friend of mine chose to go the milchig route, and had the fettuccine with wild mushrooms in a light cream sauce. He said that he found it to be “very tasty and very filling”. I also recommend trying an offering from the Milk Street Cafe’s rotisserie. In particular their KC BBQ brisket, which is smoky, sweet, and cooked to a melt in your mouth perfection.
As I sat sampling my sandwiches, I realized that The Milk Street Cafe caters to all walks of life. A non-kosher eater could easily walk into the restaurant and never know they were at a kosher establishment. It so flawlessly integrates the different cuisines in such a graceful and thoughtful way that the effect is seamless. Owner Marc Epstein says that he is “living the dream” in bringing his successful Boston restaurant to New York. But what I don’t think he realizes is that he is actualizing the dream of a number of kosher consumers as well, by providing a kosher environment that feels like dining in a high-end cafe that happens to be kosher. It’s just one more large step towards the mainstreaming of kosher food. I can’t wait to go back and continue working my way through its extensive menu.

Zechariah Mehler is a widely published food writer and expert in social marketing. Follow him on Twitter @thekoshercritic