On Hanukkah, Jews feast on potato pancakes. On Passover, they eat matzo. But the most underrated of the holidays — from a culinary perspective, that is — is Shavuot, when the tradition is to stay up all night and eat dairy, preferably cheesecake.
June 3 to June 5, Shavuot, which honors the day the Jews received the Torah, has at least seven reasons for being the day of dairy, according to Rabbi Shraga Simmons on the website Aish.com. The most succinct explanation is that the Torah is as nourishing as mother’s milk.
Besides a dairy binge, one reads the Torah all night, which could, in a Reform household (a very Reform household), be interpreted as an excuse to throw a great big dairy party.
If cheesecake isn’t your thing, you can swap it for a nice cheese blintz or other milky goodies. Here are some options (they are all decidedly un-kosher options . . . but we said Reform!).
Say cheesecake!
The most famous cheesecake in this city is still probably Junior’s in Downtown Brooklyn, which now comes in various varieties from sugar-free low-carb plain (for $36.95) to strawberry ($44.95).
But there are plenty of newcomers to the field, such as Breads Bakery around Union Square, which makes a classic cheesecake ($42), as well as a chocolate cheesecake ($42) and three-layered streusel cheesecake with passion fruit marmalade ($26.96). Breads also offers a number of other dairy goodies such as cranberry and gouda challah bread for $7.95.
And few can resist the siren song of Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar, which makes a vanilla cake layered with liquid lemon cheesecake, strawberry jam and strawberry frosting ($44).
Y’know what — I don’t need the cake. Just give me the cheese, creamed.
Among our favorite bagel stalwarts are Absolute Bagels in Morningside Heights and the Bagel Hole in Park Slope. And the latest bagel hot spot is Black Seed Bagels in Nolita.
Get blintzed.
But if you have no interest in making them yourself, there are still a few places with blintzes, like the East Village’s all-night Ukrainian coffee shop Veselka and Eli Zabar’s E.A.T. on the Upper East Side. And we noticed that the new Russ & Daughters Cafe which just opened on the Lower East Side has — you guessed it! — blintzes.
Eh, the heck with all this – let’s just have an ice cream party!
At least you now have an excuse for waiting on the absurdly long line at the new Dairy Queen (54 W. 14th St.) that opened last week. And this seems made for Shavuout: DQ’s Strawberry Cheesecake Blizzard. But there are also plenty of options for the more discerning ice cream consumer.
If you’re the Ben & Jerry’s sort of person who likes your ice cream crammed with a lot of extras, Ample Hills Creamery, which recently added an outpost in Gowanus (its home base is in Prospect Heights, and there’s a kiosk in Brooklyn Bridge Park), offers flavors like “the munchies,” consisting of pretzel-infused ice cream studded with potato chips, Ritz crackers and mini-M&Ms. And Manhattanites always have il laboratorio del gelato on the Lower East Side, which has on its menu everything from cheddar cheese to Turkish fig gelato.
For the purists who like their flavors simple, however, Blue Marble in Cobble Hill and Prospect Heights and Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, which has brick-and-mortar locations in Boerum Hill, Greenpoint and the East Village, will never disappoint.