The Chutzpah of Traif

Chutzpah, you know.

But "treif" (okay, traif)?

A new non-kosher restaurant:

IN the valley of the shadow of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where bearded Hasidim cross paths with mustachioed steam punks, stands the restaurant Traif.

The name, in Yiddish, refers to food forbidden under Jewish dietary law. To underscore the point, the front door has the logo of a cute little piggy stamped with a heart.

Some would call this wit, others blasphemy. No matter. The name generated plenty of buzz before the place opened in April, which presumably was the intent of the owners, Jason Marcus, the chef, and his girlfriend, Heather Heuser. (He’s Jewish, she’s not.)

But here is Traif’s little secret: it is, simply, a very nice restaurant...Yes, there is pork belly ($8); calamari ($8); a flat-iron steak with blue-cheese butter ($18). But no kid goat seethed in its mother’s milk. No frog legs or rabbit. Not even filet mignon...

Traif
229 South Fourth Street (Havemeyer Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (347) 844-9578, traifny.com

There are some Jews who always are trying to be different.


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