Chef Josh Kessler is an accomplished owner and operator of fine kosher restaurants. Six years ago, he opened Balnea Bistro on East 46th Street in Midtown. The kosher fine dining restaurant was so successful that 18 months after opening, he purchased the adjacent space, doubling the size of his restaurant.
Earlier this month, Kessler opened Bonito 47, a 7,000-square-foot restaurant that, like Berna Bistro, seats 150. The new location is on West 47th Street, conveniently located between the Broadway theaters and the Jewish Diamond District.
As Kessler recently told New York Jewish Week, his goal with the two restaurants is to “raise the bar and create an environment where kosher diners can experience global cuisine.”
Bonito 47 in Midtown West is a sexy spot — can you really say that about a kosher restaurant? From the moment you enter the basement space, you’re greeted with subdued lighting, dark wood floors, lavishly upholstered chairs, tables draped with thick cotton tablecloths, and just the right amount of jazz music in the background.
In fact, the restaurant is as well-equipped as any other fine dining restaurant in New York City, kosher or not, and Kessler says that’s exactly the point: The restaurant is “beautifully designed and professionally done, and the service is no different to any other fine dining restaurant in New York City,” he said.
“My long-term goal is to continue to add new concepts to our kosher cuisine and continue to raise the bar in kosher cuisine,” Kessler said, “to bring exciting new concepts to our guests, kosher and non-kosher alike.”
Kessler’s commitment to quality is evident in every aspect of his business: He and his staff source the finest USDA Prime beef, fish (Barnea Bistro buys from the same fish wholesaler used by Le Bernardin, considered by many to be one of New York’s great fish restaurants), and vegetables.
Eran Kornblum, founder of Great Kosher Restaurant Media Group, considers Kessler’s eatery to be top-notch, likening it to Prime Grill in its heyday around 2000. “If you look around you, half the restaurants are not Jewish,” he said.
Kornblum said Kessler’s restaurants thrive because their chef “works hard: He’s consistent, he’s elegant, he lets the food speak, and he delivers on what he promises.”
At Bonito 47, Kessler has high expectations, including two very different omakase menus. These chef’s choice menus (omakase means “left to you” in Japanese) have become hugely popular in New York sushi restaurants, and kosher sushi restaurants are no exception. Bonito 47 will offer an 18-course omakase sushi menu for $275, with fish flown in daily from Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji Market.
Bonito 47’s sushi ingredients are flown in daily from Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. (Real Arch Media)
But he’s also experimenting with a concept he hasn’t seen in any other kosher restaurant in the country: steak omakase. “What if I did a steak omakase and allowed the customer to try different cuts of the animal?” he said of his 10-course, $250 menu. “On the menu we have côte de boeuf, entrecôte, chateau, surprise and skirt steak. Different cuts of meat are cooked differently, so there’s an academic side to it, but there’s also a fun side to what I’m doing.”
“I know that my fellow guests, our guests, are very into steaks and beef,” he added. “The kosher people, they go to the carving station all the time. [at events]And we want to give our guests what they want.”
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Kessler, who personally trains restaurant staff, likens dining at a fine-dining restaurant to a dance. What he calls a “sequence of service” begins the moment a customer calls to make a reservation and continues throughout the meal, from resetting plates between courses to refilling water. After a customer leaves, waiters are expected to note the customer’s likes, dislikes and allergies in a profile for the next time they return, according to one waiter who has been with Bernea Bistro since Kessler opened it.
Bonito 47’s menu is designed to be “more palatable for the faster-paced customer,” Kessler said: A customer rushing to get to a show or a business meeting can order sushi, a burger with remoulade on a house-made bun, or a chicken Caesar salad and be in and out of the restaurant in an hour.
Across town, at Bernea Bistro, the menu “focuses on dishes that most people wouldn’t make at home,” Kessler says, “and there are no side dishes on the menu. The plates are structured and ready to eat. There’s a lot of thought put into which vegetables go with which sauces, which proteins go with which.”
Though the menus are different, both restaurants share Kessler’s same philosophy: listening to diners, preparing the perfect meal for them and welcoming them in beautiful, luxurious spaces.
Balnea Bistro’s general manager, Anthony Grulick, trained for seven years at the Paul Oger Hospitality School in Nice, France. “Even in Paris, there are no kosher restaurants that meet Kessler’s standards,” Grulick says.
Kessler takes pride in the fact that “on any given night, every language is spoken” at Balnea Bistro, and hopefully one day at Bonito 47. “We have non-Jews as well. We have a cross-section of society,” Kessler said.
The new Bonito 47 is an offshoot of Kessler’s previous restaurant, Bonito, which he opened near Union Square in 2020. Its small size (68 seats) meant it couldn’t meet demand, so Kessler closed it and moved to Midtown, where he said he could serve a larger audience and expand his concept.
Alain and Ellen Roizen, who live on the Upper East Side, are big fans of Kessler’s cooking and frequent patrons of Barnea Bistro. The couple came to kosher relatively late: Alain grew up in Paris (and even celebrated his bar mitzvah at the Ritz Hotel) and his mother was a skilled chef who made foie gras and bouillabaisse. The decision to go kosher suggested they might have to temper their gourmet enthusiasm.
But that’s not the case at Balnea Bistro, the couple say. “It’s nicely decorated, elegant, and the meat is perfect,” Alain says. “They cook it just the way I like it.”
Ellen agrees: While the salade Lyonnaise is traditionally made with bacon, here it’s made with kosher lamb bacon, “like a French bistro,” she says, adding that keeping kosher “doesn’t seem like a sacrifice” at the restaurant.
Of course, some are willing to make sacrifices, others aren’t. When asked if he was looking forward to trying out the Bonito 47, Alan balked at the cross-city commute. “The location doesn’t help me,” he said.
