Community Staple Got Kosher Ceases Restaurant Operations

Life can change at a mercurial speed in the kosher food business.

On Monday of last week, the following announcement appeared on Facebook:

“It is with profound sadness that I am announcing today that Harissa Restaurant and Got Kosher Deli & Bakery will be closed as of Jan. 23.” 

The next Got Kosher bulletin arrived 48 hours later: 

“We will be open on Fridays from 8.30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at our current location, 8916 Pico Blvd., for challahs & breads — and every Friday only until we open every day at our new bakery, 8758 Pico Blvd.”

The sadly familiar latest – but definitely not final – chapter in Got Kosher’s 17-year run was written by owner Alain Cohen, whose fascinating background towers over his business:

“Since the beginning of COVID, we have stayed open for 22 months. But today, with the lack of customers, the lack of employees, the lack of revenues and the decision of the landlord to sell the building, we have arrived to the conclusion that it is not possible for us to hold it any longer. We have been losing money for months, and it is not possible to do more.”

At 66 years old, the dynamic, multi-gifted Cohen possesses more vigor than people one-third his age.

“Instead of looking at this as if we are closing the company, I tell my friends that I am downsizing, restructuring to rebound.” 
— Alain Cohen

“Instead of looking at this as if we are closing the company, I tell my friends that I am downsizing, restructuring to rebound,” he said. 

While Cohen admits feeling a spot of relief at the moment (“no point in running a business that loses money”), he swiftly switches gears.  

“I am excited about turning the page and trying something else,” he said. “At our bakery, everything will be parve. I want to concentrate on selling my challah to supermarket chains. I want to spread out quality food that will enter the mainstream.”

The math of the pandemic has shaken the strongest nerves, but not Cohen’s. Once he had a fleet of 40 employees. “Overnight in March 2020, we lost 50% of the business to start, but I still had 75 to 80% of the expenses,” he said. “I went down from being a manager to being chef-creator looking at recipes, to cooking in the kitchen, and finally to handling the whole brunt.”

This was not the way Cohen envisioned the climactic chapter of his working life, which is why he is not surrendering. In the early 1960s, his family joined an ongoing Jewish exodus, fleeing Tunisia for France following numerous government conflicts. He began helping his father in the kitchen when he was nine, and learned about French and Tunisian cuisine.  

“I was not kosher at the time,” he said. “My family was, but I was not. It became an asset in my life because I learned what supremely good food can be. My palate knew where things should be. The North African culture I come from would give me the knowledge of fresh ingredients, all the spices and herbs, and how to make them good.”

When Cohen got older, he wanted to work in show business; he had directed a film about Jews on the Tunisian island of Djerba (where “Star Wars” was filmed). He moved to L.A., but concluded that a film career would elude him. Food then regained first place in his mind.

“When I faced the reality of opening a kosher food place, I had a crisis of conscience: If I am going to sell kosher food, I better be kosher myself. Otherwise, I cannot look at myself in the mirror.”

He took on a kosher diet overnight. “I felt very good about it. A whole weight lifted off me. It was like coming home. All my life, every time I would eat non-kosher, I would hear a tiny voice say, ‘Ah, not right.’ I remember my mother saying when I was about six years old, going to a school after we had moved to France, ‘Don’t eat treyf. If you do, you are going to die.’”

When Cohen opened Got Kosher, he sold deli and Shabbat food, and quickly became successful. He attributes it to his good palate, which he said is a “gift from God.” He also used the skills he learned from working with his father in the kitchen, like how to produce fast and good food on a large scale. 

“I took the menu my family was doing – grilled meat, fried fish, couscous—and I made it like a Parisian bistro in presentation,” he said. 

He believes this style inspired the kosher exotic cuisines that exploded in its wake.

Cohen said that the creation of pretzel challah put Got Kosher on the map. 

“I was working at the La Brea Bakery as a manager,” he said. “Nancy Silverton was my boss. She put out incredible breads. She made a slim version of a [pretzel] baguette. Then I saw a bakery on San Vicente that put out croissants with pretzel. When I came here and wanted something really different and original, the idea clicked that we Jews are about challah. Why don’t we make it pretzel? So I did. Then I said, ‘let’s push it further. Let’s put Belgian  chocolate chunks in it.’”

What followed was a whole line of exotic gourmet challah, and Got Kosher’s cemented status in the community. 

“People reacted because there was nothing else like it,” Cohen said.  

Now, even though the restaurateur has to change his business model, he knows it’s not the end of his work in the kosher food business.

 “The company is not finished,” he said. “And I am not finished.”