The menorah at Jacob’s Pickles.
Two Upper West Side restaurants are getting funky with their latkes, according to recent articles about funky latkes.
Bustan, 487 Amsterdam Avenue (83rd-84th)
“On the Upper West Side, Bustan, a modern Israeli restaurant, is employing sweet potatoes and zucchini for their version of latkes, imbuing the pan-fried treats with slightly more nutritional value. That said, it’s a massive portion, including four thick latkes served with smoked salmon pastrami, a dill creme fraiche and some amber orbs of salmon roe for $14. If smoked fish isn’t your jam, the restaurant will also fry up more traditional potato latkes (four for $11) with homemade sour cream and apple sauce on the side.” — Gothamist
Jacob’s Pickles, 509 Amsterdam Avenue (84th-85th)
“A slightly less outside-the-box creation comes from Jacob Hadjigeorgis of Jacob’s Pickles, the Southern comfort food spot on the Upper West Side. He’s using sweet potato for the starchy base and topping it with Cajun and scallion crème frâiche, which he says is inspired by ‘Southern ingredients and the Hanukkah spirit.’ He says the sweetness from the potato is balanced by the savory creamy topping, with a hit of salmon roe to add a “delicious burst of savoriness.” It’ll be garnished with pickled mustard seeds ‘because we’re Jacob’s Pickles.'” — Village Voice
Have a funky latke dish? Let us know in the comments! And Happy Hannukah!
Congratulations to BOTH of these restauranteurs for daring to defy convention and substitute other vegetables for the glycemic-busting super-bad carbohydrate — the white potato!
Anyone who has read cardiologist Arthur Agatston’s revolutionary life-changing book, The South Beach Diet, KNOWS how bad white potatoes are. In fact, Agatston uses the white potato as the baseline for measuring the relative glycemic value of foods.
He considers the white potato (as well as white rice and white bread) to be the absolute WORST things a dieter could eat.
AND, he wrote, to make the negative effect of white potatoes even worse, cut them up or mash them and fry in a high-saturated-fat grease — giving one “French Fries” (okay, Freedom Fries) or Latkes. Both are guaranteed to eventually blow up your waistline and clog your arteries.
The Latke can also be blamed for the unusually high rate of heart disease among older Jewish males. To answer the question “Why do so many Jewish men die before their wives?”: it is NOT, as the old joke has it, “Because they want to” but because of Latkes and other artery-clogging/waistline-expanding foods.
I love the image in that last paragraph of old men eating gobs of latkes every day.
Lighten up, dude.
It’s just a latke.
While pretending to know how to write without having skill is bad, it’s worse to pass yourself off as an epidemiologist when you don’t understand the basic principles of that science.
W.T.F. ?????????????????????????????
The best Latkes recipe ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2GOrdxCm6Q
speaking of latkes…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2GOrdxCm6Q&sns=em
FWIW, just had the Best Latkes ever this Saturday at Barney Greengrass’ on Amsterdam & 86th.
Not anything Funky, but simply very well done.
Bustan’s is excellent. Jacob’s Pickle, yuck.