Don't worry...it's 100% kosher

Growing up, I didn’t have a very strong Jewish background. I never had a bar mitzvah, Yom Kippur was just another school day and Shavuot, well, what’s that? But Shabbat, now that was special – that was the day we had bacon for breakfast!

Now, I don’t want to insult anyone who’s never tried it, but I really loved bacon. That all ended in 1985, when I went kosher. For 26 years, bacon has not crossed these lips. Until now.

No, I haven’t given up on kashrut. This bacon was 100% kosher. It was on the menu at a small, off-the-beaten-track French restaurant in Jerusalem called Moise.

The kosher bacon at Moise is made from lamb, not pork, but it still has that greasy, oily, crispy texture and flavor I remember from my sacrilegious youth. The four pieces that come with the order are accompanied by several dates, walnuts, almonds…and peach slices.

This was not the first time I’d heard about kosher bacon. Several years ago, while visiting Silicon Valley, I read about a kosher restaurant called The Kitchen Table that also served the dish. I asked Claude, our waiter and the co-owner of Moise, if he’d heard about The Kitchen Table before. Not only was he familiar, he said, but it was Haim David, the chef at that California establishment, who had taught Simone (Moise’s chef and Claude’s wife) how to make’n the bacon. David is now in Israel, studying at yeshiva in Safed.

Beyond the bacon, the rest of the food at Moise is truly extraordinary, including a unique kosher bouillabaisse (the French fish soup staple that is usually made with mostly seafood). The restaurant is tres pricey, but the group buying website Groupon frequently offers half price deals and you can use two coupons per table, which really helps. But when it comes to bacon, the sty’s the limit.