The kosher haute cuisine restaurant hunting a Michelin star

Nobody would have blamed Simone Zanoni for walking away when a Jewish businessman from Paris approached him with the idea of establishing an haute cuisine kosher restaurant.

As executive chef of the two Michelin stars Gordon Ramsay restaurant at Trianon Palace hotel in Versailles, Mr Zanoni already had a lot on his plate. The thought of a classically trained, non-Jewish Italian taking on something he had only ever read about was surely a non-starter.

"So of course, I said yes," he recalls, arguing that Jews observing the dietary laws had no good restaurants to go to. "It's a no-brainer."

Approaching its first anniversary, Rafael, as the restaurant in Paris's 17th arrondissement is called, is doing well. The 38-year-old Mr Zanoni says that he has already achieved operational break-even. The next goal: a Michelin star.

He has also secured $10m in financing to set up a similar venture in New York, with a different investor. The plan is to open before the end of this year.

For the most part, Mr Zanoni's customers are Jews from France - the country has the world's third-largest Jewish population - as well as from Russia, Israel and the US.

Mr Zanoni says that the restaurant has weathered January's terrorist attacks in Paris by Islamist extremists, one of whom killed hostages in a kosher supermarket. "We lost some tourist trade initially but the locals kept coming," he says.

Until Rafael opened, the terms "fine dining" and "kosher" rarely appeared together. Scour online Jewish forums and the community's top kosher picks generally settle on Chinese restaurants.

Mr Zanoni is the first to admit the project was tough. The first challenge was gutting the site, which was a kosher restaurant that fell a long way short of Mr Zanoni's standards.

Before joining the Trianon Palace restaurant, he worked in London, first at Aubergine from 1997, then as sous-chef at Petrus and Claridge's, and finally as head chef from 2003 to 2007 at the three Michelin stars Gordon Ramsay restaurant.

"To be honest, the previous kosher restaurant was a bit scabby," says Mr Zanoni in an Italian meets East End London accent. "The only thing we left was the walls. Then we knocked those down, too."

Today, Rafael seats between 60 and 70, and is decorated in a conservative light grey with purple velvet chairs. The transformation cost €600,000, half of which went into the kitchen.

Out front, Mr Zanoni has covered all the bases. Serving wine is only done by Jewish waiters, in accordance with kosher law. But the biggest challenges were behind the scenes.

The first was preparation. Meat was a must so Mr Zanoni banished dairy, in accordance with the kosher prohibition on mixing the two. "Every law you have learnt about cooking you have to throw out the window," he says. "How are you supposed to make a risotto without butter or cheese?"

Today, Rafael offers his customers a rich and creamy risotto without cheese or butter. A delicious - and butterless - tarte tatin is also on the menu. One benefit is that lactose-intolerant diners can eat anything on the menu.

Sourcing was another challenge. Mr Zanoni says that finding the few kosher butchers in Paris with whom he works was easy; the hard part was teaching them techniques that they had not used before, like ageing meat and improving the quality of feed for livestock.

Mr Zanoni, who is planning a kosher recipe book, says the results are already on display. But there is more to do. As he puts it, "There are things that traditional gastronomy thought about 200 years ago that we are only just now starting to do with kosher food."

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