Hungry? Try the Kosher App

KosherToday.com

Finding a kosher restaurant has never been easier with the “Kosher Near Me” App by Jonathan Myron.

In Uber-like fashion, the app identifies the location of the user and walla, it provides instant information on the closest kosher restaurant.

As a result of his world-wide reach Myron offers an insight into the “exploding” kosher restaurant scene. The most recent numbers, says Myron, indicate that there are between 3,500-4,000 kosher restaurants in the world, at least 800 of which are located in New York alone.

As the many websites and apps have learned, it is virtually impossible to provide an accurate number at any given time, Elan Kornblum who publishes both a guide and on-line directory of the kosher restaurant scene is constantly updating the openings and closings of kosher restaurants. Sites like Shamash which maintains a kosher restaurant database are often outdated precisely because of the constant changes of openings and closings.

Outside of New York, the best bet for a kosher diner is, of course, places like Jerusalem and perhaps Paris and London. France which has the largest Jewish population in Europe has approximately 300 of Europe’s 700 kosher restaurants.

What surprised Myron the most was ‘Kosher Pita Grill’ which opened in Guayaquil in Ecuador which only has a small community of around 1,000 Jews “but they have been going through a kind of renaissance in recent years.”

He added: “They came together to open up the only kosher restaurant in the city. We think this is magnificent.”

Other places where one may not expect to find kosher food (other than in Chabad houses) include a falafel place in Tokyo, a brasserie in Luxembourg, Cafe Hillel in Caracas, Kosher Center in the city of San Jose in Costa Rica and Cafe Eden in Istanbul. Moreover, there are no less than six kosher restaurants in Chile.