At last year’s grand opening for Oro Nami, a kosher sushi spot in Washington, the restaurant’s splashy aesthetic — red velvet booths, multicolor clocks projected on the ceiling, dark walls, a light-up floor — did not exactly align with the clientele: Capitol Hill staffers, new Trump administration appointees, K Street lobbyists and a handful of Orthodox rabbis.

But even if Oro Nami’s atmosphere felt slightly out of place in Washington’s quiet West End neighborhood, where the city’s small Orthodox community is centered, that incongruity was no match for the excitement among observant Jews living in the nation’s capital. For years, people had been clamoring for more kosher dining options in the city, and in particular one that would be open past 8 p.m. Oro Nami seemed like the answer. 

That is, until it shut down in May, after less than a year in business. 

Now Char Bar, the meat restaurant in the West End that has been serving observant Democratic and Republican officials — and their friends and colleagues — for years, is once again the only sit-down kosher restaurant with a liquor menu. Nearly all of the area’s kosher restaurants are located in Maryland suburbs like Silver Spring and Rockville, where the bulk of the region’s Orthodox community lives. In a city that thrives on power lunches, kosher-keeping Jews have only one option. 

The closure of yet another kosher restaurant in the District has reignited one of Jewish Washingtonians’ favorite conversation topics: Why aren’t there more kosher restaurants in a city as important as the nation’s capital?

People with knowledge of the restaurant business say that the answer is straightforward, if unsatisfying: economics. The Washington metro area has more than 300,000 Jews, according to a community-wide study completed in 2017. Just 5% of them are Orthodox, and most of the Orthodox Jews live in Maryland.

“Kashrut in general in D.C. I think is tricky, because from a real estate perspective, everything is priced like a normal restaurant,” said Rabbi Charlie Schwartz, the director of Lehrhaus, a kosher restaurant in Boston that plans to expand to Washington. “It’s assuming that you’ll do a high volume of business on Fridays and Saturdays, and for larger restaurant spaces that you’ll have pretty high alcohol sales, and kosher restaurants just don’t operate that way.”

“There isn’t a concentrated district [in D.C.] where all the Orthodox Jews work. There isn’t a district where everybody is going to particular museums. Even the museums and the things that tourists do are spread out,” said Dani Klein, who runs the popular blog “YeahThatsKosher.”

In 2024, Lehrhaus announced to great fanfare that it planned to open in Washington, its second city, in 2025. But the restaurant, which bills itself as a “Jewish tavern and house of learning,” has not even broken ground on a location in D.C. yet. (“We’re 100% in on D.C,” Schwartz promised. “We’re not dismayed in any way.”)

Dani Klein, who runs the popular blog “YeahThatsKosher,” said that the layout of the city doesn’t help.

“There isn’t a concentrated district [in D.C.] where all the Orthodox Jews work. There isn’t a district where everybody is going to particular museums. Even the museums and the things that tourists do are spread out,” said Klein. He compared it to Midtown Manhattan, where he works in corporate marketing. Due to its proximity to major tourist attractions such as Times Square, Broadway and Central Park, along with scores of office towers, the neighborhood has a wealth of kosher options, though he noted several restaurants have closed recently.

He described Chicago as a more apt parallel to D.C., although Washington actually has more kosher options downtown. 

“As you go further north [in Chicago], outside of downtown, and you start going to where the Jewish community lives, then you get massive pockets of kosher,” said Klein. Washington’s kosher restaurants are mostly in the suburbs, too. 

Char Bar’s owner, Michael Chelst, does not primarily earn a living from running a kosher restaurant. He also works in the mortgage business, and he recently took over operating Moti’s Market, the kosher grocery store in Rockville. 

“I call us a ‘likely for profit’ business. We’re not a nonprofit,” Chelst told Jewish Insider recently. “I get frustrated when people go, ‘Oh, why don’t you do more of this and that.’ I’m like, ‘Listen, we’re just trying to keep it open and keep it going for our community and for the people there.’” Still, the vast majority of Char Bar’s customers are tourists, according to Chelst. 

Despite the addition of Oro Nami last year, 2025 was Char Bar’s highest-revenue year since it opened in 2014. (Chelst previously ran a different kosher spot, Eli’s, in the same location.) Chelst said he thinks Washington would benefit from a dairy restaurant, even if it competes with Char Bar.

“I’m sure that would hurt our business, but I wouldn’t be upset if one opened, because that would be good for the community,” said Chelst. 

People know there’s an appetite for more options, even if the money isn’t quite there to support them. 

“I get a call, I’d say, every other month or so from someone who’s very interested in starting up any of a range of Kosher cuisine enterprises here,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad). “I know of a few currently still considering doing so. They’re watching downtown business lunch traffic, and when that picks up, I think you’ll see another one or two actually get established.”

Other options have opened and closed over the years. Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who went to prison on corruption charges, ran a kosher deli for a period in the early 2000s. An upscale kosher French restaurant called L’Etoile closed in 2002 after three years. The local Israeli chain Shouk closed last year, in part due to boycotts by anti-Israel activists. In earlier eras, when the local Jewish community was actually centered in the District and not the suburbs, kosher options were not so hard to come by; following the Civil War, six kosher restaurants were operating in D.C.

“I urge the relatively new kosher-keeping residents of Washington, D.C., to understand the privilege that they have to live in this time,” said Aaron Keyak, a Democratic consultant who moved to Washington nearly 20 years ago. “And with the advent of all these food delivery apps, you can reach into the suburbs and get everything from kosher Chinese to pizza.”

But despite the kvetching from locals, Washington’s kosher restaurant scene has not actually been stagnant in recent years. Oh Mama Grill, a casual Israeli-style falafel and shawarma restaurant, opened in Adams Morgan in 2022 and is still operating. During the academic year, anyone — whether affiliated with George Washington University or not — can visit Zingers, a kosher restaurant in the GW Hillel that opened in 2023 and is operated by the university’s dining operation, as part of the school’s pledge to provide kosher options for Jewish students. Zingers serves sandwiches and bowls alongside what it deems “the best chicken sandwich in Foggy Bottom.” At $12, the sandwich can compete with non-kosher options. 

“People eat there because the food is good,” said GW Hillel’s executive director, Daniel Novick. “A lot of non-Jewish students are eating there.”

There are even now kosher deli sandwiches available for purchase in the cafeteria at Longworth, one of the congressional office buildings. 

Other kosher options in the city include Pow Pow, a vegan Asian restaurant with two locations in the city, and Baked By Yael, a bakery across from the zoo in Woodley Park that sells pastries, challah, bagels and cake pops. They are certified by a kashrut agency operated by local Modern Orthodox rabbis — so while some strictly religious Jews may not eat there, the creation of DC Kosher to give the seal of approval to local plant-based restaurants was a boon to most of the city’s observant Jews.

“I urge the relatively new kosher-keeping residents of Washington, D.C., to understand the privilege that they have to live in this time,” said Aaron Keyak, a Democratic consultant who moved to Washington nearly 20 years ago. “And with the advent of all these food delivery apps, you can reach into the suburbs and get everything from kosher Chinese to pizza.”

“People are always kvetching about why there aren’t more establishments,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad). “But once they open, the proprietors feel that the community doesn’t show enough support.” 

D.C. is a foodie city, at least for the non-kosher keepers. Two Washington restaurants appeared on The New York Times’ vaunted “50 Best Restaurants” list last year. Don’t expect to find kosher restaurants on the list — but that doesn’t mean the city’s kosher food scene is a lost cause.

Shemtov, one of the best-known Orthodox rabbis in Washington, had a blunt message to Jewish Washingtonians about the local food scene.

“People are always kvetching about why there aren’t more establishments,” said Shemtov. “But once they open, the proprietors feel that the community doesn’t show enough support.” 

It was like the now-famous Barack Obama line from the 2016 Democratic National Convention, when he urged Democrats to vote in that year’s elections. Don’t boo. Vote.

Shemtov’s message is similar. Don’t kvetch. Eat. 

When Aimee Greenfield, a real estate agent in Sparta, N.C., posted in a Facebook group for Orthodox Jews last year with information about plots of land for sale in an undeveloped gated community in her town, she had two goals. 

The first was to convince enough Orthodox Jews to uproot their lives and move to a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains in order to start a new, close-knit rural Jewish community there, which might eventually sustain a synagogue and a kosher supermarket — all in the hopes that Greenfield’s kids, who are religiously observant, would move there and live close to her. 

The second goal was downstream of the first, but still important to Greenfield, herself an observant Jew who has lived in Sparta for 13 years: get enough Jewish women in this town of fewer than 2,000 people near the Virginia border for Greenfield to be able to sustain a weekly mahjong game. “I’m not worried,” she said when speaking with Jewish Insider last Thursday, while braiding and decorating six challahs for Shabbat. “I’m going to accomplish both goals before I die.”

Her enthusiastic Facebook posts found their way early last year to Yudi Gross, a financial planner in Florida who, after reaching Greenfield on the phone, flew to North Carolina to meet her. Gross thought he might buy a plot of land to develop a vacation home for his family. Instead, he spotted a business opportunity, and a spiritual one. With other private investors, Gross bought the entire gated community, with plans to build 350 homes. He called the project Shefa Living, “shefa” being Hebrew for “abundance.” 

“If we were to build a Jewish Orthodox community from scratch, how can we do it differently, and how can we do it in a way that creates healthy environments for the children to learn and grow, and healthy environments for adults to continue to learn and grow?” Gross said in a recent interview with JI. 

He knows his pitch is somewhat unorthodox: Move to the mountains. In North Carolina. To a tiny town with no synagogue and few other Jews for miles. But what he’s pitching is a radical vision of what observant Judaism could look like if not bound to the geographical constraints that have kept Orthodox communities from rural living. 

“This is not just 25-30 people who want to have a nice place in the summer. This is a dream for so many people,” said Gross. “I hope this transforms the way Orthodox families can choose to live geographically.”

He chose Sparta out of what some in the Jewish community might deem bashert, a Yiddish word for “destiny” or “soul mate.” After seeing Greenfield’s post, he didn’t consider whether other areas might be better suited for a new Jewish community; he felt there was something magical about Sparta. 

Still, Gross, who founded a wealth management firm, knows recruiting people to the neighborhood is a heavy lift. The nearest cities, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, are over an hour away, and Charlotte is nearly two hours away. People who buy homes in Mountain View, as the neighborhood will be called, must also buy into the vision of building a tight-knit community from the ground up (literally — the homes won’t be ready for at least a year).  

Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Twerski, a rabbi from Monsey, N.Y., is on board to oversee religious matters in the community. Plans are underway to build a mikveh, a kosher supermarket, an Orthodox school system and a yeshiva — a second location of Yeshivas Lev Simcha, a religious school in Boca Raton, Fla. A synagogue has already been constructed. 

All has not gone perfectly to plan; a group of yeshiva students were set to move to Sparta this fall, but zoning issues delayed the first batch of residents from coming to Mountain View until September 2026. But local officials in Sparta are excited about the community, according to Gross, a contrast to the antisemitic resistance put up in some New Jersey municipalities where Orthodox populations have increased in recent years. 

“It’s almost unheard of, from my experience, to see such a community being so open-armed about Orthodox Jews moving in,” Gross said. “I remember going to town, people stopped us to say shalom.” Greenfield noted that Sparta is a conservative Bible Belt town: “They love Jewish people,” she said simply. 

Glossy marketing materials on Shefa Living’s website call it a “new Torah-centric community in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” A frequently asked questions section touts North Carolina’s low state income tax and property tax rates, an educational voucher program and a lower cost of living. 

Mountain View is described as a place “where Yiddishkeit, spacious living and nature are seamlessly intertwined for mountain living without compromise.” A brochure shows three-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot homes starting at $549,000, and five-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot homes starting at just over $1 million. 

Buyers have put down deposits on 60 homes, Gross said. Starting in September, they’ll choose their lots, and work with developers on selecting upgrades and finishes in the new homes. More than 150 people have visited North Carolina to tour the site. 

One of the first Mountain View homeowners is Blimy, a mother of four from South Florida who asked that only her first name be used to protect her family’s privacy. She and her husband decided to jump in at the beginning to help build the community because they were true believers in its mission — the slow pace of life in a quieter community with fresh air and proximity to hiking, rivers and more. 

“I always wanted to be a hermit in the mountains, but then you’re missing community. I love the idea of having quiet around you, being able to feel yourself and feel your inner alignment and feeling connection to Hashem, to spirituality from within,” Blimy told JI. 

Most of the visitors to Sparta have come from New York, Florida and California, according to Gross. The earliest buyers know that going first means they’ll be arriving next year to help build Mountain View, when some of the proposed amenities, like a fully stocked kosher supermarket, may not yet be open. It may require commuting back to their old communities for work, or seeking remote opportunities.

“I think that the people who are going to be drawn here first are the pioneer types, the ones who are not needing the support that other people might need right away. They’re interested in leadership,” said Blimy. “I’m looking forward to the kind of community that this will be at the outset, because I think it will be really special, and what it will evolve into.”