I am partial to Jerusalem Steak House. It has locations on Avenues J and M (slightly easier to park on M if that matters). Food is typical grill and Israeli salads. Very fresh and cooked to your preference. They also start you out with a fresh hot laffa.

They recently redid the interior, so it looks nice although smaller than before. There is now a big bar in front. As to the food, it was never one of my favorite places, so I I was only setting my standard at edible. It is that. They also seem to have revamped the menu so it is smaller than before. That being said, for a big party of varying tastes - without spending an arm and a leg it is still a good option.

Third. (they don't have laffa though if it important to you)

I didn't go to the class, but I was in Le Marais tonight and saw that they are advertising their own summer grilling cooking class on May 6th. Price is kind of steep - $125, but will include a full meal and single malt scotch, beer, wine and a 'goodie bag'.

For that amount of people I would suggest Garden of Eat-In in Midwood, Brooklyn. They have a separate room that people use for parties that would probably work for you. Also, it is a block from a subway station (albeit not one that goes to the LES directly).

They have the Charedim maztos at KRM in Boro Park. It is $24.99/lb. They were the most expensive of the matzos they were selling (omitting those made of spelt, which were more $). They may also have them by Moishe's in Flatbush since the 2 stores are owned by the same people.

You may want to go post on the Home Cooking board to get more recipes. Also search there, I am sure this is a topic that has been discussed there before.

For some reason the matzah farfel always works better for me texturewise than crumbling wet sheets of matzah. I do the sweet version. About a cup of matzah farfel, quickly rinsed and excess water shook off, 2 eggs, a splash of milk and a splash of vanilla. Saute in skillet as though you were making scrambled eggs. Top with sugar, or maple syrup.

Can I ask what foods you did for the Southern theme? Was it just modified BBQ?

My family loves French Onion Soup. Saute onions until caramelized, add a nice red wine and some beef stock (or parve beef stock mix if you want to keep it parve) and s&p. Easy, and simple, and it tastes great.

Spaghetti Squash with tomato sauce and cheese.

Are we talking just for the seder or the entire passover?
For the seder my family usually does a variation on Thankgiving dinner: turkey, stuffing made from matzah farfel, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
If we are talking all of passover then my favorite is eggplant rollatini stuffed with a mixture of riccotta, spinach and parmasean.

Donut Man closed down months ago. The higher rents on 13th Ave are decimating the business there, just like Kosher Delight was also closed down.
That being said, the donuts weren't that great to begin with. I think that had to do with their being parve though.

Can you make it savory, by making a bbq shredded brisket and then stuffing it in puff pastry dough cut in rounds or something similar?

If you do decide you want to eat at a hotel it pays for you to shop around to see what has the best price. I just booked a hotel partly because the price of the shabbat meals. For example the Leonardo Plaza is now $91 per person per meal, and although the food is good there, I really don't think the price is justified.

Has anyone done the 'Shuk Bites' self-guided tour of Machane Yehuda? I stumbled upon this looking for foodie tours in Israel.
http://www.machne.co.il/en/category/t...
If you have done it is it worth the price? Or would I be better off just going around the market on my own? I like that this way you kind of get a taste for everything and that you don't have to use the whole thing in one day.

While I am on the subject does anyone have any other recommendations for foodie tours in Israel?

Thanks!

Assuming you are staying in the 41st St area you should be just fine w/o a car.
For breakfast I like Tasti Delite, they have a nice breakfast special and lots of differnt choices of omlets. I am a little disappointed they took the red velvet pancakes off their menu though. They were good.
Beyond by Shemtov is like a pizza store on steroids. Their menu is huge, you could go every day for a week for every meal and get a new thing each time. I especially liked the eggplant parmesean sliders. And for a decadent dessert get the zeppoles. Fried dough with cinnamon and sugar, 1 portion is enough to feed an entire family.
I also really liked House of Dog, next to the chocolate store. I got the Carribean dog there and it was really good.

Be aware that if you are there for yeshiva week any and all of these places will be packed.

What about the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE)? They have a whole recreational cooking division. The course catalog is online, I don't know if it extends into summer yet.

I think the food is better at Mike's, and I agree with GilaB that it could be very cramped at Tevere 84. That being said, if you do go there I like the Roman style artichokes and the lasagna.
Colbeh does have a private room upstairs and in the back of the restaurant, no idea how many people you would need to score one of those rooms. It would also be slightly cheaper than either Mike's or Tevere.
I have been to Prime Ko seated next to a large party and if you are looking for somewhere quiet that is definitely not the place to go to.

I really like the (dairy) caramel donuts from Schriebers on Ave M. As with all doughnuts they are best fresh and hot.

Take. Out. Menu.

I actually have that Honeycomb cake pan, and it is fun to use, the recipe on the packaging is really good as well. On caveat though - it is a pain to clean, because of all the little ridges and it needs to be handwashed.

What about getting one of those chocolate fountains with lots of things to dip in them? Kids love those, although they can be extremely messy.
Also, fresh popped popcorn is always nice.

Bagelman, I don't know why you would make all these assumptions about me and my party and put this bad experience as our responsibility. There is no need to question my manners. I am hoping it is simply that you did not understand my post. To clarify: This was on Wednesday evening, not Thanksgiving. I understand that a restaurant may be busy and would have something of a delay and if such was the case would have been ok with that. This was way beyond that. In the time that we were sitting there waiting for our food there was turnover at every single table surrounding us, including 2 were the people were seated after us, ordered, got their and ate, and left,. all while we were still waiting for our appetizers to come out. Keeping us in the restaurant for 3+ hours, basically keeping us at a table for the whole evening did neither us or them any good. It was so excessive a wait that someone at my table asked if we were on some sort of hidden camera show. Additionally, you are wrong about your assumption about splitting the bill. Amongst ourselves we did the calculations about who owed what and put post it notes on each credit card stating the exact amount that should be charged on each. And the only reason we did that and thought it was ok was because during our wait for the table we saw them splitting bills for other diners with no problem.
I usually do not go on chowhound to pan a restaurant, but in this case, when as you point out that there is a finite number of kosher restaurants I would rather give people a head's up on what they could expect in this place, so they don't waste there time or money. That, I think, is good manners.

Went out to Estihana on the Upper West Side last night after going to see the Macy's balloons. It was one of the only times in memory that we actually wanted to leave a place without any tip whatsoever. Why? We made a 7:30 reservation for 5 people. Showed up at 7:20 and there was a line out the door, it literally took 10 minutes to just get in and let them know we had a reservation. Then it took them over a half hour to find us a table, even though they had our reservation written down. They were seating walk-ins before people with reservations. If that is the case I have no idea why they would bother having reservations to begin with. After we were finally seated they only gave us 3 menus and then we could not get the waiters attention for another 20 minutes. Since we had come in knowing what we wanted (we mostly went for the crispy beef) we thought it would be pretty simple to order and get food right? After placing our orders for apps and mains we waited over an hour until any food arrived. Again, no waiters around to tell us what the hold up was or offer any explanations. Finally got the appetizers and then had to wait another 1/2 hour for the mains. By this time we had been in the restaurant so long that we didn't even feel like eating them. Only ate about half then wanted the rest wrapped up. Again, no waiters to help or to ask for the check. Finally got someone to give us the check and they decided we had to speak to a manager about splitting it (even though while waiting for a table we saw them splitting checks amongst various credit cards with no problem.) Finally got out of there after being there for over 3 hours. Another in my party told the manager as we were paying how dissatisfied we were. He could not have cared less. And to make it even worse the food was only OK, even the crispy beef we originally went for was only so-so. Will not be going back.

Green bean almondine? That should hold up well and be good at room temp. Or else just grilled veggies are nice as well.

Just a thought - any chance this guest did this only to irk you, in a misguided attempt at a joke? You know 'hey, I bet it will make sunshine842 crazy to see the pepper in the place that the cumin should go. Haha.'

I went Sunday night with a group of 4. Thought the reservation process was fine, they emailed me back right away to confirm and asked if we were celebrating anything special. I emailed back that we would be celebrating my mother’s birthday that night. One disappointment I had is I looked at their menu on the website and spotted something I thought I would like, but when we got there it was not on the actual menu.

We shared two appetizers, the Braised lamb agnolotti – basically lamb ravioli and duck rilletts, which was more of a pate of shredded duck with little crostini and turnip chips. The texture was more of like a chunky tuna salad. For the mains we got the boneless rib eye steaks - all cooked perfectly to specification and the lamb burger, which came with this wonderful sun-dried tomato condiment. For dessert I got the dark chocolate caramel tart where the sea salt was the perfect counter balance to the sweet caramel.

Basically overall it very good food, and even if something was not to my taste didn't mean it was bad, just something I would not really appreciate, like the olive oil cake with lavender which someone else at my table ordered for dessert. I got the dark chocolate sea salt caramel tart. Also, they did make note of my mother’s birthday, so they brought out an extra dessert for her with a candle in it which they did not charge us for. It was a peanut butter/ chocolate layer cake thingy.

Also, it has some of the best service I have ever had on a restaurant. Extremely attentive, even had the maitre de stop by and we had him go through who all the people were in their painting of the last supper.

As I was telling a friend, the biggest difference between Jezebel and a place like Pardes is that Jezebel is not trying to bill itself as a 'foodie' destination. They are trying to attract a cool, hip crowd and be the newest it spot for the who's-who that happen to be kosher. So, while the food is good it is almost secondary to the purpose of the place. It is not revolutionary in its food aspect, nor is it trying to be.

You can see whether Pomegranate in Brooklyn will ship them to you. I know they have them (though they are very expensive).

Does anyone know of any restaurants that will deliver to downtown Brooklyn?

TIA

I took at sugar pulling/blowing class at ICE in NYC during the winter. I was the only non-professional student there but it was fun. It was a 3 day class and at the end we got to take home sugar centerpieces that we had made using the different techniques taught in class.