Ditmas Kitchen and Cocktails

A chef who can take a restriction and turn it into an asset is a great chef indeed. In recent years, some of the most interesting food I've had has come from chefs who limit themselves in some way: to raw food, to meat-free food, to the food of one farm, to food they've grown themselves. Such limitations can midwife great creativity. Anyone can cook a piece of salmon and throw it on a plate with spinach and mashed potatoes. A great vegan cheesecake? That's harder. While Pico-Robertson has begun to see destination restaurants in recent years, those have been disconnected from its core community. Ditmas clearly hopes to bridge that gap. Alex Reznik, a Top Chef alum and former chef of La Seine and FigOly, has just opened a restaurant with a number of constraints. According to Reznik, Ditmas Kitchen & Cocktails is first and foremost an ode to New York — the restaurant is named for the avenue where the chef grew up in Brooklyn. It's also kosher, joining a growing number of ambitious kosher restaurants that are popping up nationally. A kosher menu puts many things off limits. Of course there is no pork or shellfish. Ditmas also is dairy-free, negating the need for the requisite separate kitchens and sets of equipment to handle meat and dairy. The restaurant is billing itself as something of a chophouse, with a whole section of the menu dedicated to steak, but the beef is only from the front of the animal, as kosher law dictates (it's somewhat more comple