L.A. Gets its First Couscous Bar —and It’s Kosher

Fifteen years ago, Alain Cohen co-founded Got Kosher? cafe on Pico Boulevard. Then, he went into hiding.

More accurately, his sumptuous Tunisian couscous, which bore the culinary richness of his country of birth, went into hiding, purposely overshadowed on his menu by foods like hamburgers and chicken sandwiches, which Cohen anticipated would sell better.

It wasn’t the first time Cohen felt he had to hide Tunisian cuisine. In the early 1960s, after his family left Tunisia for Paris, his father opened a hole-in-the-wall wine bar that also sold a few Tunisian dishes. The only problem? There was no kitchen.

So his mother cooked the food out of the family apartment in the suburbs of Paris and nine-year-old Cohen was tasked with bringing it to his father’s small business via public transportation. “I was with my rattan bags full of meatballs and couscous taking the bus and Metro for about 45 minutes to an hour,” Cohen said during a 2017 KCET profile of Got Kosher?. “The first impression was one of shame and embarrassment because the fried meatballs would smell, and everyone on the bus would smell them, and I would try to hide it.”

I know exactly how that little Tunisian boy felt.

When my family and I came to the United States from Iran when I was seven, I was mortified when my mother placed the stupendously stinky Persian meat patty sandwiches (“kookoo”) in my school lunch bag. And when we rode the Los Angeles buses downtown together, holding used pita bags containing kabob sandwiches, other immigrants on the bus always seemed to move to farther seats.

Convincing Americans to try new cuisine isn’t always easy. In the early years of Got Kosher?, Cohen eased customers into recognizing Tunisian cuisine, such as couscous, on the menu. “It was a little bit like the first Korean restaurants that didn’t dare announce they were Korean and pretended to serve Chinese food with some Korean, Thai or Vietnamese dishes in between,” Cohen told the Journal. “Later, when my customers finally realized that I was introducing North African foods in the middle of an American menu, they thought the dishes were Moroccan.”

Long gone are the days of clandestine couscous. This month, Cohen unveiled inside Got Kosher? L.A.’s first couscous bar, a few feet away from his famed loaves of pretzel challah.

And a couscous bar is innovative in its own right: Plenty of local North African restaurants serve couscous dishes, but they’re offered as platters. Cohen’s couscous bar offers a cafeteria-esque selection of various protein toppings, all of which are served on top of a bed of fluffy carbohydrates — in this case, couscous.

Here’s how it works: behind plenty of plexiglass is a friendly server, who holds a to-go container and asks how you’d like your couscous. There are beef, chicken, lamb, and tofu meatball options, alongside a traditional seven-vegetable broth that’s poured over the glorious mound of fluffy couscous.

Prices start at $10, which, during a pandemic, is welcome news. “This is not the time for fancy meals at expensive restaurants,” Cohen said. “For places to charge so much for food right now… it’s almost immoral.”

Like many other local restaurant owners, Cohen has been working around the clock to ensure that Got Kosher? remains afloat during a devastating pandemic, including offering a daily two-for-one special. But Cohen faces a major problem with parking scarcity. Got Kosher? is a few steps away from the Pico Robertson Senior Community, a project of Mercy Housing, one of the country’s largest affordable housing organizations. The site used to be a large, outdoor parking lot, and when construction began on the facility three years ago, it “killed the parking situation for the whole neighborhood, including for our cafe, which is right next door,” Cohen said.

But Cohen’s life experience has taught him about the importance of resilience, community and trust in God. It’s with a particular sense of community in mind that he hopes to elevate couscous to its proper place in the Jewish diet.

While couscous is enjoyed by most North Africans, it takes special prominence in Tunisian cuisine — couscous is to Tunisians what pasta is to Italians, potatoes are to the Irish and rice is to the Chinese. As an Iranian, I get it. The thought of eating my beloved Persian stew dishes, like ghormeh sabzi or fesenjoon, on top of anything other than basmati rice is downright sacrilegious.

“It [couscous] is also the national dish of Jewish families in Tunisia, served at every single Shabbat dinner around the country,” said Cohen, whose maternal grandparents were from the island of Djerba (off the southern coast of Tunisia), where a small Jewish community has lived for 2,500 years. His paternal relatives were from Carthage (a suburb of Tunis today), where archaeologists have found Jewish graves dating back to the Punic Wars (264 BC -164 BC). Cohen traces his family roots in Tunisia to the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Given Cohen’s Tunisian roots, couscous all but flows through his blood. “I realized that being Tunisian, couscous is comfort food for me and other North Africans,” he said. “I actually feel completely satiated and happy when I eat couscous.

Given Cohen’s Tunisian roots, couscous all but flows through his blood.

“What’s funny is couscous eventually became a French national dish,” he continued. “When I left France in 1981, couscous was known by the refugees of the Algerian and Tunisian wars. Now there’s not one cafeteria or restaurant in France that doesn’t serve a couscous dish of some sort.”

If the freshly-baked pretzel challah on the shelves near the couscous bar weren’t enough (the challah is perfect for sopping up any remaining broth from the couscous platter), there’s a selection of non-dairy French, American and North African pastries a few feet away. I have a weak spot for the sweet “arissa cake,” a Tunisian speciality made with semolina and orange blossom. My biggest indulgence at Got Kosher? is the vanilla raspberry mousse cake. I’ve never figured out how the dessert achieves such unabashed creaminess without being dairy, but it’s a testament to Cohen’s dedication to making kosher food taste really good. As he said in a 2009 Los Angeles Times profile, “[Kosher food] should be something you don’t have to apologize about.”

In 2008, Cohen rented a vacant store next to Got Kosher? and opened a restaurant by the same name. In 2016, he renamed it Harissa, the name of a Tunisian hot chili pepper paste. “I wanted to give the restaurant a name that is the essence of my origins, a staple in Tunisian cuisine and a bold new hot flavor in the never-ending rain of hot sauces,” Cohen said. “But a sauce with subtleties and soul, not a napalm torch.” His success is a far cry from the days when he served as a nine-year-old busboy back in Paris.

Conversing with Cohen and his wife, Linda, at the cafe is always an exercise in old-world, neighborly hospitality, something that’s badly needed these days. Like a kid in a candy store, I peruse the dessert selections and ask if there’s any chocolate chip pretzel challah left on the shelf. But these days, if you need me, I’ll be over at the [couscous] bar.

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and activist.