A new restaurant in Midtown raises the bar for fine dining

Chef Josh Kessler is no stranger to owning and operating upscale kosher restaurants. Six years ago, he founded Barnea Bistro, a restaurant on East 46th Street in Midtown. The kosher fine dining establishment was so successful that, 18 months after opening, he bought the space next door and doubled the size of his restaurant.

Earlier this month, Kessler opened Bonito 47 — a 7,000-square-foot restaurant that, like Barnea Bistro, seats 150. This new location is on West 47th Street, conveniently located between Broadway theaters and the predominantly Jewish Diamond District.

With both restaurants, Kessler aims to “raise the bar and build facilities where kosher guests can be exposed to world cuisine,” as he recently told New York Jewish Week.

Midtown West’s Bonito 47 is — dare we say it for a kosher restaurant? – a sex site. From the moment diners enter the subterranean space, they are greeted with low lighting, dark wood floors, richly upholstered chairs, tables covered with heavy cotton tablecloths, and jazz music that is indeed the background.

In fact, the restaurant is just as designated as many other fancy restaurants around New York City, kosher or not—and according to Kessler, that’s entirely the point. The restaurant, he said, “is beautifully designed, professionally done with service that would work in any other high-end establishment in New York.”

“My long-term goal is to continue to add new concepts to kosher cuisine and to continue to elevate kosher dining,” Kessler said, “bringing exciting new concepts to guests, kosher and non-kosher.”

Kessler’s attention to quality is evident in every aspect of his businesses. He and his staff source the best USDA beef, fish (at Barnea Bistro, he buys from the fish supplier used by Le Bernardin, what many consider to be one of the best fish restaurants in New York), and vegetables.

Elan Kornblum, founder of Great Kosher Restaurants Media Group, thinks Kessler’s restaurants are a cut above, comparing them to Prime Grill in its heyday around 2000, “where you’d look around and half the restaurant isn’t not even a Jew,” he said. .

Kessler’s restaurants thrive, according to Kornblum, because the chef “puts his head down and does the work,” he said. “He is stable. Elegant. He lets the food do the talking. And what he promises, he delivers.”

At Bonito 47, Kessler is promising a lot — including two very different omakase menus. These chef-selected menus (omakase means “I’ll leave it up to you” in Japanese) have become extremely popular in New York sushi restaurants—and kosher sushi restaurants are no exception. At Bonito 47, there’s a $275, 18-course sushi omakase menu with fish flown in daily from Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Fish Market.

The sushi fish at Bonito 47 is flown in daily from Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market. (Real Arch Media)

But he’s also trying a concept he said he’s never seen at another kosher restaurant in this country: steak omakase. “Why not do a steak omakase, where my guests can explore all the different cuts of meat from the whole animal?” he said of the 10-course, $250 menu. “We have cote de boeuf, entrecote, cottage, ‘surprise’ and skirt steak on the menu. Certain cuts of meat work better with different styles of cooking, so there’s an academic side to it – and there’s also a fun side to it, which is the business I’m in.”

“I know our guests, who are part of my tribe, are very passionate about steak and beef,” he added. “Kosher people always go to the carving station [at events]. And I want to give my guests what they want.”

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Kessler — who personally trains his restaurant staff — describes fine dining as “a dance.” What he calls the “service sequence” begins the moment a guest calls to make a reservation and continues throughout the meal, from resetting cutlery between courses to refilling water at the ready. Even after a guest leaves, according to one of the waiters who has been with Kessler since he first opened Barnea Bistro, the waiter is expected to note the customer’s likes, dislikes and allergies in the guest’s profile, for the next time he or she line. for a meal.

The menu at Bonito 47 has items that are “more palatable to guests moving at a faster pace,” Kessler said. If customers have to run to a show or a business meeting, they can order sushi, burgers topped with a remoulade sauce and served on a house-baked bun or chicken Caesar salad, and be in and out of the restaurant for a hour.

Across town at Barnea Bistro, the menu “is mostly food that most people won’t make at home,” Kessler said. “And there are no side dishes on the menu. The dishes are made up, ready to go, and a lot of thought goes into it – which vegetables go with which sauce and which proteins.”

Although the menus are different, both restaurants share the same Kessler philosophy: listen to the guests, curate the best possible meals for them and put them in a beautiful and luxurious space.

Anthony Greulich, the general manager at Barnea Bistro, trained for seven years at the Paul Augier School of Hospitality in Nice, France. “Even in Paris there are no kosher restaurants that meet Kessler’s level,” he said.

Kessler takes pride in the fact that, at Barnea Bistro and hopefully one day at Bonito 47 as well, “every night, every language is spoken,” he said. “I have non-Jewish guests. It’s a cross-section of society.”

The new Bonito 47 is an outgrowth of Bonito, a previous Kessler restaurant that opened in 2020 near Union Square. The size — it seated just 68 people — didn’t meet the demand, so he closed it and moved to Midtown where, he said, he could serve more customers and expand the concept.

Upper East Siders Alain and Ellen Roizen are big fans of Kessler’s cooking and are regular guests at Barnea Bistro. The couple began to observe the laws of kosher eating relatively late in life; Alain grew up in Paris—where he had his bar mitzvah at the Ritz Hotel, no less—and his mother was a fine cook who made foie gras and bouillabaisse. The decision to keep kosher suggested he might have to curb his epicurean enthusiasm.

But not at Barnea Bistro, the couple said. “It is properly decorated. It’s elegant. The meat is absolutely perfect,” said Alain. “He cooks it just the way I like it.”

Ellen agrees. The Lyonnaise salad — traditionally made with ham, but here made with kosher lamb ham — is “just like in a French bistro,” she said, adding that at the restaurant, keeping kosher “doesn’t feel like a sacrifice.”

Of course, there are always sacrifices people are willing to make – and others they won’t. When asked if they are excited to try the Bonito 47, Alain didn’t shy away from the trip to town. Its location, he said, “doesn’t help me.”