New York Jewish Week via JTA — Four years ago, businessman Albert Gad opened the UN Plaza Grill, an elegant kosher restaurant, in the skyscraper in which he lived. The space is sumptuous – with high ceilings, large windows, crisp white table linens, a room with a view of the United Nations across the street. The dishes served there are delicious, and the service refined.
Gad created this high-end kosher restaurant to, according to him, “bring another look at kosher”. And it worked. Customers come for the porcini and white mushroom soup with truffle oil and croutons, and for the prime sirloin grilled to perfection.
But the restaurants have, like all of us, been confronted with the advance of the coronavirus and, in March 2020, the restaurant closed its doors. Gad kept his apartment, but he followed the exodus of New Yorkers to Miami, eventually deciding to live there full-time.
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Rather than abandon the restaurant in which he had invested heavily, Gad reopened it in August 2020 with the same employees and the same chef – and he announced, last month, the appointment of ‘Inès Chattas, born in Argentina and catering professional in Miami, as “culinary director”. She will have to revitalize the menu, make it more contemporary and open it up more to the cuisines of the world.
She brings many skills to her new role. She is cooking. She plans. She designs menus. She calculates. The restaurant needs to be more contemporary? There is no doubt that the forties will carry out this mission.
Chattas, 45, has been in the industry for more than twenty years – she started first behind the scenes, including at the Icebox Cafe in Miami Beach, and more recently at the Open Kitchen in Bay Harbor, near North Miami, a restaurant open for ten years where she was chef. She was then recruited as a chef/manager of restaurants open only to residents, including the Majestic Tower in Bal Harbour, the building where Gad now resides permanently and where he already had an apartment. It was there that he became a fan of his cuisine and his commercial know-how.
He had already asked her to come to New York to work at the UN Plaza Grill four years ago.
“I had never taken this proposal seriously. I have three restaurants in Florida! exclaims Chattas. But, last fall, after a trip to New York to see the restaurant and meet the staff, she finally accepted the offer. She will continue to manage her establishments in Florida, but she will add the UN Plaza Grill to this already tight schedule by intervening there as a consultant.
The leader will stay. The employees too. As a culinary consultant, she will refine the menus already in place, add more international and more “trendy” elements and bring the brand to the next level – the level to which the restaurant, Gad and she are convinced, really belongs.
Chattas also represents a new face in a male-dominated industry.
The mezzanine of the UN Plaza Grill, on the East Side, in New York City. (Permission/via JTA)
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“She is one of very few women to hold a leadership position in a kosher restaurant in Manhattan,” says Elan Kornblum, founder of the Great Kosher Restaurants Media Group. Women in the kosher restaurant industry may have noted that working long hours and working late hours can be difficult to balance with community expectations around raising children.
Chattas is excited about this new challenge, but has encountered some difficulties. Chattas is Jewish, but she didn’t grow up kosher. His great-great-grandparents were gauchos Jews, who arrived in Argentina with other immigrants from Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century with Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German Jewish financier and philanthropist. She has fond memories of her great-grandmother’s typically Jewish chicken soup with matzah balls – a recipe she made her own with a little personal touch – but she had never worked previously in a kosher restaurant.
“I put grilled beef skirt with chimichurri sauce on the menu and only then learned that kosher beef skirt is too salty,” Chattas explains (because this piece of meat is very thin, it absorbs more salt in the koshering process than other thicker cuts of beef). “We don’t have skirt steak on the menu now, but we do have chimichurri on request. »
Chattas made the changes working with the advice and guidance of the mashgiach (kosher supervisor) of the restaurant. You can still enjoy the perfectly grilled Pepper Steak from the old menu, but now it’s presented as a Pepper Filet Mignon with Berry Sauce – a derivative of non-dairy Tofutti.
“I discovered that Tofutti makes the sauce creamier,” she says. “I am very happy with the result. »
The multicultural origins of Chattas are also felt. Her family and culinary roots come from Germany, Georgia, Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, Lebanon and Syria. It was her Syrian stepfather, she says, who taught her how to cook spicy kefta meatballs – a dish that has been added to the menu – which she flavors with cinnamon, baharat and cumin. The Wiener Schnitzel, Viennese cutlet, served with its salad, is a nod to Argentina where the dish is on the menu of all restaurants.
Tonight special @unplazagrill Blackened rib eye come join us see you later
Posted by UN Plaza Grill on Monday, October 18, 2021
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The restaurant should also be revamped. “We are in the process of finalizing the design of a new bar,” says Chattas. “People love to sit at a bar. This automatically creates an atmosphere. In the city, every restaurant that works has one. We are planning parties, on Saturday evening, with tapas, cocktails and a DJ. »
With the United Nations as their source of inspiration, Gad and Chattas will give their cuisine the colors of the world – much to the delight of customers who eat kosher and the diplomatic corps.
“We’re going around the world,” says Chattas. “We’re going to feature a different country, every month, in a way that makes sense. For example, the storming of the Bastille is in July: July will be the French month. We will have a fixed price menu developed by a French chef in collaboration with us, and we will offer French kosher wine. »
At a recent dinner at the establishment, days before the latest wave of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant, change was already on the plate. Chattas’ boneless braised rib steaks, with their herbs and spices, were both savory and bold – with a delicious combination of onions and garlic essential to the sauce, pink berries and allspice.
But that was before. How will the Omicron variant impact Gad and Chattas’ plans?
“The pandemic is not going away,” Gad said. “But people are not going to lock themselves in their homes. Chattas, meanwhile, hopes this wave will be the last.
And if you can, don’t hesitate for a second to visit the UN Plaza Grill during New York’s Winter Restaurant Week, which runs from January 18 to February 13. Both will be there and will be able to make you discover specialties of the menu: Samosas of lamb curry with their mango sauce, beef stew with spicy tomatoes and, of course, rib eye grilled to perfection.
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