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Beer and Pickles Meet Smoked Fish at Prospect Heights' New Kosher Wine Bar

By Sonja Sharp | October 2, 2013 12:21pm
 Itta Werdiger Roth and Sasha Chack of Mason and Mug, a new small plate and kosher wine bar opening in Prospect Heights this fall. 
Itta Werdiger Roth and Sasha Chack of Mason and Mug, a new small plate and kosher wine bar opening in Prospect Heights this fall. 
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Mason and Mug

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — For a new Brooklyn bar, Mason and Mug has got all the right adjectives: local, sustainable, artisanal, handcrafted — and kosher. 

"The theme is street food, global food, international street food from different places: gravlax, on rye, pickles and smoked fish platters, kimchi, fish tacos — it’s our interpretation of food from all over the world," said chef Itta Werdiger Roth, who ran popular kosher supper club The Hester before teaming up with Alexander Chack to open Mason and Mug.

"We want to be a space that’s great for the locals, and then it’s kosher too." 

The Washington Avenue beer and wine bar will serve homemade "tapas style" fare alongside local brews and kosher wines when it opens late this fall. 

"Our beer list will have inexpensive things for people who like to drink Miller High Life all the way up to Delirium and Chimay, and we’ll have all kosher wines," Chack said. "Most of [the menu] will be based on the foods that we think that people love but that they don’t get enough of in restaurants. We’re going to be using Acme smoked salmon, pastrami salmon and good smoked fish."

The bar will also include a small kosher grocery, packed with handmade specialty items and artisanal kosher products that are hard to find outside the city's Jewish enclaves. 

"We’re going to have a retail specialty grocery section in the front of the space where we’re going to sell a lot of the items we use on our menu — spreads, pestos, tapenades," Chack said. "We’ll have kosher specialty products that aren’t available in the neighborhood, like challahs and Acme smoked fish, different things we can get from around Brooklyn, like specialty kosher cheeses you can’t get here."

Still, the pair expect most patrons to see kosher as a footnote on their eclectic, local fare. 

"We want to target people who want great, fresh, affordable food," Chack said. "Because [Prospect Heights] is not known for kosher food, it’s important for us to be the one."