Esquire recently announced their annual 50 Best New Restaurants in America list and a new spot in Somerville was one of their picks.
Lehrhaus, a Jewish tavern, opened in spring of 2023 and has been building momentum ever since. It’s fair to say it’s a unique bar and restaurant in Boston, where high rents and hard-to-obtain liquor licenses make opening a smaller, more niche spot extremely difficult.
The restaurant celebrates the wider Jewish diaspora – beyond deli favorites – while keeping kosher. In fact, co-founder Joshua Foer (author and one of the founders of Atlas Obscura) told Boston.com that he believes Lehrhaus is the first kosher spot to ever be included in the magazine’s 41-year history of publishing the list.
Esquire wrote, of the food, “Deviled eggs, haminados-style, are aged in coffee and topped with pickled mustard seeds. A herring tartine comes with the bright spice of pickled peppers alongside the silvery fish.”
We’re partial to the mac ‘n’ cheese kugel, with crispy sunflower seeds.
Another interesting note, the restaurant’s delightfully crispy fish and chips, made with day boat pollack are seasoned with Old Bay, which might seem secular. However, Old Bay was invented by Gustav Brunn, a Jewish German refugee, in 1939.
The cocktails at Lehrhaus are incredible and inventive, which probably also grabbed Esquire’s attention. Drinks like The Tribe of Dan (named for one of the 12 tribes of Israel who migrated to what is now Ethiopia and Sudan) mix niter kibbeh (a spiced, clarified butter with origins in Ethiopia) infused rum with banana, pineapple and lime for a unique, tropical style drink.
Although the menu is kosher, all are welcome in Lehrhaus’ high-ceiling, book-filled rooms. “One of the things that we’re proud of is, this is not just a place for Jewish people,” Foer told Boston.com. “This is for everybody. Especially in a moment when there’s so much anti-Semitism in the world, we’re proud to have a place that shines and shows the world the best of Jewish culture.”