In the lobby of a fairly nondescript office building in Hackensack, you’ll find what looks a lot like your standard café for this type of setting. It’s not going to catch your eye; it’s not fancy … frankly, it’s not much of anything. And while you will notice that there is a kosher certification posted on the wall, that’s not entirely strange. More than a handful of office building cafés in Bergen County (New Jersey) and neighboring Rockland County (New York) are kosher due to the number of kosher-keeping workers.
The menu has sections on it that would look familiar in a café like this. There are breakfast options like omelets, bagels, waffles, pancakes and French toast. There are lunch options like paninis, poke bowls, salads and wraps. But there’s a page of the menu that stands out from all the usual offerings. In fact, it’s the kind of page that you basically can’t find on any kosher restaurant menu.
Mexican and Latino Food
That’s right, just like you can order a breakfast plate with your standard classics, you can order Oaxaca Sopes (corn tortillas topped with refried beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa verde and sour cream).
At this point, you’re probably wondering how this all came about (while also putting the address into your phone and seeing how long the drive is). For that, you have to thank Elmer Jiménez. A veteran of the kosher world, Jiménez has worked for catering companies and restaurants over the last 15 years. But one thing that he always noticed was the lack of Mexican food available to the kosher-keeping community compared to the rest of the population. With enough experience behind him, Jiménez decided to open a place where he could make recipes from home, but have the Jewish community taste them.
When I was invited to Blue Star Café, I first started with some of the more common items. I did this because I have often heard people complain that some new kosher restaurants with ethnic food menus are tough to visit given that somebody in the party might not have the palate for whatever the food is. That’s not something that you have to worry about at Blue Star given the extensive menu. If you are there for breakfast, the Egg & Avocado Toast is the perfect choice. The toast was perfectly crunchy even after being topped with the avocado, cheese and egg. The tomatoes on top were an extra note of brightness that paired well with the other elements.
If you find yourself in a similar situation at lunch time, I’d go for the Volcano Poke Bowl. I really liked how fresh and spicy this bowl was, but feel free to go with a different choice (or make your own) if you aren’t ready for this level of heat. The bowl features a bed of rice with pepper-crusted tuna and salmon alongside cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapeños and furikake. The crunch on top is provided by tempura onions and shreds of nori, and the sauces are a sriracha, a spicy mayo, and a jalapeño mayo. The merger of the different types of heat was a wonderful combination that stood out compared to other poke bowls I’ve had, and I loved that there was such a spicy option on the list of choices.
With all that said, you are likely visiting Blue Star for the Mexican offerings and there’s no better starter than the Traditional Nachos. House-made tortilla chips are topped with their vegan chili, jack cheese, pico de gallo, jalapeños and sour cream. For me, the taste of the chili is really what made this different from the nachos at other dairy restaurants. There was a real depth of Mexican flavors and spices in the chili. The heat helped melt the cheese, the jalapeños were avoidable (in case you’re sharing with a person with milder tastes), and the pico de gallo added a freshness that made me feel better about eating nachos.
For something that you can’t find as easily as nachos, try out the Chilaquiles. This Mexican breakfast favorite is made by topping tortilla chips with salsa (in this case you choose between a red or green version) and cooking them until the tortilla chips soften a little and absorb the salsa. While there are several versions of this dish depending on what you add after that, Jiménez decided to make it the way he ate them growing up, with eggs on top. With cheese and onions between the eggs and the tortillas, it’s kind of like a Spanish omelet on top of chips. These were addictive and I’m glad they weren’t the first thing I tried, otherwise it would have been hard to move on. The texture is an interesting mixture as some of the chips are more crispy than others and the flavors are familiar as things you recognize but are now eating in a different context. And if eating tortilla chips for breakfast is something you can’t get past, just look at the breakfast menu of any treif restaurant. In other words, everything is breakfast for somebody.
Maybe you want to dip your toe into the Mexican pool. Or maybe you’re looking for something you can order to go that will survive a journey. In those cases, I’d suggest the Salmon Burrito. Grilled salmon, white rice, beans, corn, pico de gallo and chipotle sauce make up this wrap of deliciousness that I ate in about 15 seconds. Firstly, the chipotle sauce was the perfect amount of smokey and spicy and it provided just the right amount of liquid to a wrap that otherwise might be too dry. The threeway mixture of beans, rice and corn was a solid base for the salmon to occupy, and the pico de gallo was there for that acidity that goes so well with fish.
Jiménez was just gaining a little bit of popularity when the Nine Days rolled around during the summer. He decided to roll the dice and open for dinner that week with an expanded Mexican dinner menu. The result speaks for itself. Blue Star is now open for dinner on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.
The dinner offerings are impressive. In fact, the best thing that I tasted at Blue Star was the Queso Fundido, a cheese dip that is exclusive to the dinner menu. Served with tricolor tortilla chips, this is like nothing at any kosher restaurant. It’s a cheese dip that isn’t just melted cheese. You can actually dip a chip in, scoop some out, and take a bite. Not only that, but the dip is topped with delicious sautéed mushrooms and veggie chorizo crumbles. I am not joking when I say that I would eat three orders of this if I could.
When I asked Jiménez how he made the Queso Fundido, he said he mixed different cheeses and had to make one of his own because there was no suitable cholov Yisroel option available.
Kind of like how he had to make Blue Star because we had no suitable Mexican option available.
Nati Burnside is a freelance writer living in Fair Lawn and is a man of many interests. He can be reached at [email protected].
