The Bestia and Bavel Chefs on Feasting After the Yom Kippur Fast

Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis, of the restaurants Bestia and Bavel in Los Angeles, talk about their food, their partnership and celebrating the Jewish holidays.

'For 364 days of the year, Ori Menashe, the self-taught chef of the Los Angeles restaurants Bestia and Bavel, is obsessed with spices and the flavor they bring to food. But there is one day he lays off the seasoning: the meal before the fast of Yom Kippur.

“My dad always says that it makes fasting easier,” he said recently, and he and his family stick with that tradition. “We eat pretty lightly, because you don’t want to stuff yourself before or after a fast.”

They celebrate the High Holy Days together, and most of the time Mr. Menashe brings food from his restaurants to one of his sisters’ homes, adding spreads like tzatziki, baba ghanouj and hummus to be served along with their dishes, which may include pumpkin and tomato soup and braised short ribs with pomegranates. But for the meals before and after the fast that marks the Jewish Day of Atonement, they stick to chicken soup, roast chicken with potatoes or a simple beef stew.

For Jews, Yom Kippur is a time to pause and reflect; Mr. Menashe, 37, could use that right now. He and his wife and business partner, Genevieve Gergis, are juggling their two restaurants — where Ms. Gergis, 40, is the pastry chef — as well as the October release of their first cookbook, “Bestia” (Ten Speed Press, 2018), and a 4-year-old daughter, Saffron.

Bavel (pronounced Ba-VEL, the Hebrew word for “Babel”), which opened in April, serves Mr. Menashe’s Israeli and pan-Middle Eastern cooking. The restaurant has the melancholy honor of being the last reviewed by the late critic Jonathan Gold, who raved about dishes like Mr. Menashe’s hummus, colored and spiced with both red North African harissa and green Yemenite zhug (a hot sauce made with fresh herbs), and his braised Wagyu beef tagine with ethereal handmade couscous.

“You can tell he is cooking the food he wanted to cook,” said Nancy Silverton, the chef and co-owner of the Mozza restaurants in Los Angeles and beyond, and briefly a boss of Mr. Menashe’s. “His flavors are so layered, because he has a great sense of the world of spices and incorporates them into each dish in the wide range of Middle Eastern cuisines.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/dining/bestia-yom-kippur-ori-menashe-genevieve-gergis.html