A former intern’s crusade to bring kosher food back to the Senate bore fruit Monday with the beginning of a trial run at the Dirksen Senate Office Building’s cafeteria.
Prepackaged sandwiches and salads “Made with Love” from Kosher caterer Bubbie’s Gourmet were stacked alongside standard fare. Options included a “Tuscan salad” of chickpeas, bow tie pasta and green beans, along with a balsamic chicken sandwich on flatbread.
If all goes well, selections from Bubbie’s Gourmet could become fixtures of dining services offered all across the Senate side of the Capitol.
David Poltorak, an Orthodox Jew and recent Georgetown law school graduate who was then interning for freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), began his quest for kosher last autumn.
On his first day, he recalled going downstairs to one of the several cafeterias and carry-outs scattered throughout Senate office buildings.
“Where’s the kosher food?” he asked.
The answer: There was none. Nowhere on the Capitol campus could observant Jews find a premade meal.
Poltorak was told by Restaurant Associates, the private company that runs the Senate food services, that there was no kosher food because there was no demand.
“I couldn’t believe there was no demand,” Poltorak said. “My first day here, I had, like, 10 kosher friends here working in Congress as staffers, and they said they wanted kosher food but had just never bothered to ask … they brought food from home or subsided on potato chips or peanuts.”
Poltorak got by on peanuts, Diet Cokes and Mike and Ike candy during the course of his internship. “It’s not my style,” he said, to bring his lunch from home to avoid a kosher junk food diet.
Sean Burstyn, a George Washington University international affairs student who also maintains a kosher diet, shared Poltorak’s experience.
Bouncing around the Capitol during his interning track, lending his services to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-
Conn.) and Reps. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Burstyn has learned the hard way that keeping kosher while working in Congress “tends to be an every-man-for-himself matter.”
When he forgets to bring food from home, the day’s diet becomes relegated to fresh fruit plucked from the cafeteria produce bins or emergency sustenance fished from scattered vending machines.
So Poltorak went to work lobbying the powers that be to provide kosher meals — and found allies on Lee’s staff.
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5 Responses
Of for joy. Wouldn’t it be better (as in more edible) to have a microwave and just bring something that comes double sealed and ready to zap even in a treff microwave?
While its unlikely that Capitol Hill (including the “Mall”) could support a kosher restaurant (it tried, and failed miserably from a financial perspective), it might support a “kosher kart” along the Mall. It would be nice if there was a restaurant closer to the Capitol and the Smithsonian, as the two restaurants in DC are in a different area of the city (and I’m not counting ones in the DC suburbs or Baltimore).
Also, a sukkah on Capitol Hill would be nice.
To have a nation’s capital city without a kosher restaurant is absurd. Most of the European capitals have kosher restaurants, why can’t ours?
(I think you meant to say, “…they SUBSISTED on potato chips or peanuts” not “subsided”.)
Poltorak should learn to listen to people. It says former intern. Is he even around to be there while those products go unsold?
Get a spine, bring your food like other jews who have spines, and leave the goyim alone. What are you on a crusade for equal rights here or something?
And if there happens to be some purchases, are they going to comlain that the selection is flat bread and bow noodles? Sheesh.
Lkwdmama,
Washington dc has kosher restaurants, just not close to capitol hill
#2- One can arrange for one of the DC (or suburban Maryland) restaurants to send food to Capitol Hill. However they have trouble getting a minyan on Capitol Hill, as most of the frum Federal employees and almost all the frum tourists are closer to the “Mall”. I should add that contrary to public rumor, the congressional staff (especially interns) probably couldn’t afford a fancy table cloth meal on a regular basis.
However a “kosher kart” a few blocks away would be nice, especially on hol ha-Moed (if they had a sukkah -we could claim it is a folklife thing and the Smithsonian will go for it)