Where to find Jewish food in New Orleans
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Matzo ball soup, latkes and New York-style deli sandwiches are on the menu all year at Kosher Cajun Deli in Metairie. Photo: Carlie Kollath Wells/Axios
The Jewish holiday of Passover starts this weekend, and several New Orleans restaurants have food for your gatherings.
The big picture: During Passover, which is sundown Saturday to sundown April 20 this year, observers eat matzo and other unleavened breads as a way to remember that the Jews fled Egypt so fast that their dough didn't have time to rise.
Zoom in: Kosher Cajun Deli in Metairie has been open for more than 30 years and is one of the oldest Jewish delis in south Louisiana.
- It's half restaurant and half market. You can get dine in with matzo ball soup and deli sandwiches.
- Plus, you can also get kosher grocery items and deli offerings, like fresh pickles and sliced meat. The deli also flies in bagels from New York.
Zoom out: Other places you can get Jewish food in town:
What is Passover?
State of play: The holiday, also called Pesach in Hebrew, is observed for eight days in the U.S.
- It commemorates the biblical story of the Jewish people's escape from slavery in ancient Egypt.
The seder is the main Passover ritual and is a holiday meal that includes the re-telling of the story of the exodus from Egypt.
- Seder feasts are held on the first two nights of the holiday in the U.S.
- After lighting candles, it's a 15-step feast, according to Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center.
- The service uses Haggadah prayer books and includes drinking four cups of wine.
Good to know: You can wish someone a "Happy Passover," Chabad notes.
- Other holiday sayings include have a "kosher and joyous Passover" and "chag Pesach" in Hebrew.
- It is not appropriate to say "Happy Yom Kippur" during the fall Jewish holiday, which marks the day of atonement.
Passover food rules
Dig in: Passover observers eat matzo, an unleavened bread, which is a flat crisp bread like a cracker.
- People who observe the holiday try to avoid food with grains, known as "chametz," like breads, pastas, pizza and beer.
Between the lines: Lots of matzo can back you up.
- "Matzo can have an extremely binding effect," says dietitian and author Tamara Duker Freuman, who's Jewish. "Its ingredient list essentially reads the same as a can of Play-Doh."
- A sheet of matzo is "equivalent to two slices of bread, flour-wise," she says, and people tend to eat multiple sheets, without getting enough fluids.
- "Anecdotally, here in New York we even see an uptick in bowel obstructions among observant Jews who have a history of Crohn's disease," Freuman tells Axios.