Why Kosher and Halal Food in America Is Special
and The Crunchwrap returns!
Dear Friends,
Welcome back to The Crunchwrap! For newer subscribers, I’m Adam Chandler, a journalist and author based in New York. I’m also the lazybones who hasn’t sent this newsletter out since December.
In my defense, I have a vicious iPhone addiction. Also, I’ve been finishing up my next book. It’s called 99% Perspiration and it’s about the story of work in American life; it comes out in January 2025 from Pantheon Books. (More about that in the link below.)
First Crunch
I admit it’s daunting to return to this newsletter in the mess of such a terrible time, domestically, globally, psychically. Still, I’m searching for stray bits of optimism. Right now, I’m in the middle of working on a piece about the intersection of popular American food and religion and I stumbled on some history that doesn’t quite fit the story, but maybe fits the sense of interconnectedness I’m otherwise grasping for.
Back in college, which was similarly brutal post-9/11-Second Intifada era, I found some solace in the fact that my school’s Hillel – the center for Jewish life on campus – served kosher meals for Jewish students that, by overlapping religious strictures, also qualified as halal (permissible) for Muslim students. Even when things were uneasy, which was often, the space still filled up with students who shared an observance rooted in similar ideals and traditions that might otherwise alienate. That may not sound like much in a contemporary context, but this was at a time when culinary culture did not cater to people with any sort of dietary restrictions.
This faint memory came to mind as I was looking into the history of how religious food standards have been deployed over time to put the minds and palates of secular American diners at ease. A little over a century ago, Nathan Handwerker of Nathan’s Famous coined the slippery marketing term “kosher-style” so that his Coney Island clientele would know that, unlike some others frank-slingers of more questionable repute, his hot dogs weren’t made from pork or horse meat.
In the decades since, countless restaurateurs, whether they were South Asian dosa-makers hoping to break into new markets or “clean” food purveyors angling to get people hooked on mispronouncing açaí, secured kosher certifications to bolster their sense of wholesomeness. More recently, on city corners, the urban stigma around street meat has been effectively countered by the growth of halal food carts, with some halal enterprises now blossoming into full-blown, brick-and-mortar franchises.
Given cleanliness’ proximity to godliness, I suppose it makes good sense. But when you consider that the Muslim and Jewish communities combine to form less than four percent of the U.S. population, this is a dynamic worth marveling over the next time you pull over for a Hebrew National or a halal gyro drenched with white sauce.
NYT Cooking Comment Watch
Anyone who reads The Crunchwrap (or ever comes over for dinner and then has to pretend they read The Crunchwrap) knows that I love The New York Times Cooking app. It’s one of my many Basic attributes. When it comes time to haphazardly slap a meal together or quickly scratch out a grocery list on a wet envelope on my way out the door, the Times is often where I look for inspiration. Moreover, the app’s interface is solid, the options and variety are interesting, and the head notes aren’t a dire grab bag of SEO terms.
HOWEVER, part of what really makes a Times Cooking subscription worth the extra scratch is the absolutely unhinged character of the recipe comments. Times’ readers are often furious – about the instructions, the ingredients, the salt content, the idiocy of other commenters, the pitfalls of monoculture farming, you freakin’ name it. It’s never dull. Occasionally though, some gems slip through, like this from one from Chef RP, who took a flyer on this Cauliflower Shawarma recipe and was extremely pleased with the results.
Right on, RP. By the way, on moral grounds, I oppose calling anything made with cauliflower a shawarma. That said, it is a very solid dish, with or without performance-enhancing drugs.
Nu, What Else?
Kaitlin Tiffany had a beautiful essay about the tech world’s sad/silly/classist obsession with creating utopias and the beauty of the world now. (Gift article)
I really liked Ben Lerner’s weird piece of auto-fiction(?) about being a Wikipedia moderator in the platform’s early days.
For those of you following or not following the NBA playoffs, Louisa Thomas’ profile of Nikola Jokić is a goddam delight.
Joshua Cohen and Ruby Namdar talking with Gal Beckerman about October 7th and the ensuing war in Gaza is a pure drop of nuance, depth, and humanity in an ocean of noise and abstraction.
That’s it for this Crunchwrap! Thanks as always for reading.
With love,
Adam