Tuesday, August 02, 2022
Hungry for Jewish tourism, Barcelona gets world’s 1st kosher Michelin-starred eatery
The typical menu at Xerta, a Barcelona restaurant that earned a coveted star from the Michelin Guide, reads like a haute-cuisine treif banquet: non-kosher dishes such as lobster, squid and oysters.
Yet the restaurant has become a hotspot for Barcelona's small number of kosher-keeping Jews. That's because with a little advance notice, Xerta will prepare food according to Jewish dietary laws in a separate kitchen, under the supervision of a local Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi.
The restaurant pursued kosher certification, which makes Xerta the only Michelin-starred kosher restaurant in the world, largely to attract Barcelona's rising numbers of Jewish visitors. But until recently, no tourists had come.
"At the moment, we cannot account for a [kosher] supply-demand relationship, but we believe it is because of the difficulties brought by the pandemic," Irene Montagut, Xerta's press officer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in May. "We'll have to wait and evaluate what happens from now once tourism resumes and the country's travel freedom improves."
Now, a busy summer travel season is underway, with pent-up wanderlust leading to packed planes and airport chaos. For Spain's Jewish tourism industry, the travel mayhem could not have come sooner, as Xerta is far from alone in counting on Jewish visitors, and it is not the only institution making changes to woo them.
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