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Knish noshing at the convention center
By adamg on Mon, 10/25/2010 - 12:42pm
Good news for people who keep kosher or just like the idea of easy access to a knish:
Hot Nosh Boston, LLC is proud to announce that our Kosher Automated Food Diners can now be found at our newest location the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The diners are located in the food court area and are available for use 24 hours a day. The menu will include Knishes, Onion Rings, Pizza, Baked Ziti Parm, Pizza Pockets and Mozzarella Sticks. The knishes, onion rings and vegetable cutlets are designated Pareve but are made on dairy equipment and should only be eaten before or after meat.
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Comments
Does the machine work on
Does the machine work on Friday nights and Saturdays? Their other machines say "24/6" on them.
knish yiddish slang
nice job with the use of 'knish' yiddish slag reference.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/01/050801crbo_books
Is this open to the public?
Or only to people who are registered attendees of conventions there? I'd like to try out the machine myself.
Open to the public
I don't know about that one in particular, but there's one of these machines in the cafeteria at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is certainly open to the public.
A warning
I don't care what kind of great food it was going into the machine..it's not going to come out the same.
That is to say, that no matter what recipe they made initially which was probably a great tasting recipe...in order to package it in a way that would survive in the machine, they will intentionally ruin the recipe without shedding a tear to extend shelf life. Otherwise it will end up costing them/you an arm-and-a-leg to cover for all of the uneaten items they would have to throw out otherwise.
The end result isn't pretty. MREs are this exact same problem taken to an extreme. Machine food is a halfway house between really good food and MREs. The only automat format that works is when they make it fresh behind the wall and put it into a slot for purchase. Everything else is so jacked up in order to keep it fresher longer, it's not worth eating.
Time to totally revamp the
Time to totally revamp the rules of Kosher to be practical for modern American society.
"Neither of Automat food nor 7-11 sandwiches shall you eat. Asparatame, Saccharin, and Olestra are all forbidden -- they will give you cancer or the runs. HFCS and refined sugars may be pleasing to you, but they are unpleasing to Me and to public health. Never eat a pizza before a salad."
"P.S. You need to stop brutalizing and stealing from the Palestinians, and make them whole again. You think I really give a damn whether you keep Kosher, when you support something like this?"
Nice.
Throw in an acknowledgment that many many Jews support and love Israel existing without supporting it shooting rockets at brown people and taking their homes, much like how many many Americans love our country but don't support it bombing countries full of brown people while failing to provide for our own people, and it will be perfect.
(Ohhhh way to derail a thread!)
But would it still be kosher?
If it had all that crap in it would it still be certified kosher?
I don't know much about kosher standards, other than they are based upon cleanliness, absence of pork/shelfish and...not having certain items mixed together.
Depends on the chosen additive
There's a list.
On top of that, there are whole companies established on setting up Rube Goldberg contraptions to get around the Sabbath work rules. I have to imagine there's also an equally imaginative crew working on how you cook something without breaking Kosher...but still stuffing it into a coin-op machine.
But the Sabbath
But will the machine work on Sabbath?
There's a huge debate about that, too
Because we Jews love us some arguin'.
Talmud talks about also avoiding the appearance of breaking Shabbat or Kashrut. Many people wouldn't eat a veggie burger cheeseburger or a meat/soy cheese burger, because it appears one is breaking Kashrut. Other people say this is fine.
Similarly, some people won't use things like Shabbat lamps, because it appears that one is turning electricity on and off on Shabbat. Other people say that they're commonplace and distinctive-looking, so all the other Jews in the community know that it's a Shabbat lamp and not a normal one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_lamp
In response
You actually are completely incorrect in all of your assertions, particularly about what is added to extend shelf life. These automated diners actually are incredibly high tech and are stored in a frozen state and prepared in a very unique was equivalent to it being in your oven for 30 minutes without any of the microwave taste. The food actually comes out piping hot and crispy.. I welcome you to try it..
Response....
For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell all in this thread that I am the CEO of Hot Nosh Boston, LLC and would love the opportunity to reply to this thread. I will be the first one to admit that when I was introduced to both of these technologies I was as skeptical as the next person. However I think you can ask anyone who has had the chance to use them and they would attest to the high quality of the food and ease of use. I surely would be happy to entertain any questions anyone might have and have therefore listed my email address. However let me address a few of the issues raised in this post.
1) These are automated diners and prepare and or rethermalize the food on the spot (depending on which diner is used). They are "automated diners" for that reason as the food is not sitting in there cooked it actually gets "grilled before your eyes" in the hot dog diner in about 33 seconds. In the Hot Nosh Food diner the food is prepared in a patented oven that has many times the cooking power of a conventional oven so that in about a minute to a minute and a half (depending on the food item) it is equivalent (as the anonymous poster correctly pointed out) to having been in your oven for about 30 minutes or so.
2) There are NO special additives used in the process. The hot nosh food is stored in the diner in a frozen state and the hot dogs are stored fresh in a refirgerated state. There are multiple fail safes built in to both diners to maintain health controls.
3) We have had wonderful success with them to this point and have them in a variety of locations; Fenway Park, TD Garden, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Childrens Hosspital Boston, Brandeis University and many more locations soon to be announced.
4) Regarding hours of operation and operating on the Sabbath. Rather then get into the nitty gritty details I will refer you to a wonderful article that discusses this matter and some you might not have thought of even!
http://www.thehalacha.com/attach/Volume6/Issue7.pdf
However, know everything is being done in full rabbinical and kosher supervisory complaince.
thanks so much!
Wayne
But does the machine work on Saturdays?
Wayne, thanks for posting. But that article on the rules for vending machines doesn't directly answer the question that has been asked here several times:
Do the Hot Nosh machines in the Convention Center operate on Friday nights and Saturdays?
Found it in a comment in another interview
The "24/6" is a gag/gimmick/joke of the company trying to be cute about the Sabbath. The machine works just fine on Saturdays. They leave it up to the individual consumer to determine whether they think using the machine on any given day is in line with their religious beliefs.
I loved the halachic guide
True confession: My parents kept kosher until they moved away from the same block as my grandparents. But that was when I was about 2, so I never got a solid grounding in kashruth, which is probably why I was fascinated by the debate over which prayers to say over things like breaded mozzarella sticks - and the idea that somebody might think it's not OK for non-kosher Jews to buy stuff from a kosher vending machine.
Halachik Guide
Adam
That guide was actually created by someone who works for the kosher supervisory agency as a result of much discussion and conversation that took place in order to do this in the most halachikly proper way.... So I find it rather cool that the creation and use of this technology for kosher opened up an oppoertunity to explore all different types of halachik venues...
Wayne
I like this havliceck guide
But I don't know how kosher his household is.
(edited b/c I couldn't get my link to show up)
http://tinyurl.com/39cazxh
Convention Center
Bob
The best answer I can give you is that if you are either 1) An employee of the BCEC etc.. or 2) A convention participant then they will be open for your use at those times....