The new Glatt Kosher Kitchen at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Town Lake stands as
the latest advancement in Austin kosher cuisine. The label “glatt” means that
this kitchen meets the strictest requirements of kosher cooking, under the
supervision of a local Rabbi, Rabbi Levertov. The Hyatt converted its old
Foothills dining space into a rather elegant kosher dining room, complete with
its own dishes, glasses, flatware, napkins, and corkscrews. In-house and
off-site catering services are available, with at least two working days
notice. While there do exist a few other caterers who rent a synagogue’s
facility or use their customers’ own kitchens for kosher cooking, the Hyatt
presents the only exclusive kosher catering operation in town.
I wondered about the constraints the Hyatt’s chef experiences when managing
this kosher kitchen. My own thoughts concerned the frequent substitution of
margarine (a non-dairy) for butter and the necessary duplication of kitchen
tools for preparing meat and dairy items separately. The catering director
mentioned no impassable limitation, assuring me of the highest quality food. I
had the opportunity to sample some of the Hyatt’s fare at their grand opening
dinner this past summer. There, I remained committed to high standards of
taste, while satisfying my curiosities about kosher service.
Salmon, chicken, and vegetarian dishes nicely balance the Hyatt’s complete
kosher menu. For the grand opening, they first served an appetizer of wilted
greens packaged in fillo and garnished with a red pepper and corn salsa. These
bite-size, basket-shaped starters were quite delicate, with fresh flavors
compensating for any insubstantiality. Additional courses prepared with fillo
dough, however, exhausted this idea. Also disappointing, the main course of
seared salmon with cracked pepper lacked flavor and moistness. Pepper dust
barely garnished the fish, contributing little to its flavor. The side
vegetables, while appetizing in presentation, were closer to raw than one would
expect from their freshly steamed surfaces. It seems even a specialized kitchen
as this can suffer from mass-production mediocrity, resulting from rushed
kitchen operations.
I’d attribute most of the celebration’s inadequacies, however, to enormous
preview pressure, and remain supportive of the Hyatt’s efforts to produce
consistently high-quality kosher service while it matures. Of course, we should
all applaud the Hyatt for its renovations, reaching out to serve a growing
community that has gone so long with few dining options.
No doubt, the Hyatt’s menu and service warrant a second appraisal. But with
only catered events as dining options, as they have been ’til now, this was
difficult to do. Now, the Hyatt is offering the first in what it hopes is a
series of Family Kosher Restaurant Nights. On December 12, 6-9pm, the kosher
kitchen opens to serve the general public a kosher buffet in its new dining
room (call 480-2002, for reservations.) — R.W.
This article appears in December 6 • 1996 and December 6 • 1996 (Cover).