Having grown up in the US South in the Jewish community of Dallas, there is nothing I love more than a kosher Texan barbecue. Two years ago, I visited Crown Heights and came across a treasure of a restaurant, Izzy’s Smokehouse.
Its owner, Sruly Edelman, is an entrepreneur who created a southern-style experience in kosher BBQ. As he has expanded his successful restaurant, he opened up an additional location on the Upper West Side of Manhattan due to high demand.
Izzy’s is an award-winning smokehouse that originated in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Pitmaster Edelman brings a local twist to a southern tradition, combining simple ingredients with quality meats to create a unique and laid-back dining experience for the BBQ lover. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with him at his new location on the Upper West Side to ask him about the ingredients of his success.
What inspired you to both create and become a pioneer in the art of southern BBQ?
A big part of the inspiration was Ari White from The Wandering Que in El Paso. I attended one of his food pop-ups seven or eight years back and right away I fell in love with the art of wood-fired cooking. He had this big pit on the street that attracted long lines – and just the smell of wood fired cooking and the uniqueness of it all made me attracted to this form of cooking in a short span of time. In the back of my mind that day, I wanted to do this for fun and try this form of cooking and used my home and backyard as an experiment. I started making brisket from home (which was disgusting at first) but started doing more research on perfecting the art of being a Pitmaster. I decided to pursue an authentic wood-fired style of Texas Kosher BBQ. Dating back to even 10 years ago, New York was a place that didn’t even have a real authentic or legitimate kosher BBQ place at all. Over the past ten years though, there have been some phenomenal BBQ joints that have hit New York hard. We coincided at a similar time when this phenomenon evolved. In the end, I decided to take up a 600-square-foot store that took two years to build in Crown Heights. We never fathomed at the time that most of our clientele (around 85%) would be traveling from all over the place and from that day forward we have been trying to stay great ever since by providing the best brisket and BBQ to New York City.
I remember the first time that I came to your original restaurant in Crown Heights, there were long lines of people waiting as well. What feedback are you receiving now?
It’s for sure unique in the aspect that before this phenomenon, kosher restaurants that provide fine dining and Meats had nothing in between. As of today, I wouldn’t necessarily say that we are in the middle but we pride ourselves in knowing that barbecue is a labor of love. We spend almost 24 hours making a piece of meat beforehand and then serve it on a tray to people who are expecting it quickly. Technically, customers think it’s fast food but if you really think about it it’s the most expensive cuisine in terms of both the labor and overnight cooks that are involved and the quality of meat. Just because you are not getting a fancy white table cloth does not mean that its cheap food. As an entrepreneur, obviously there are always ups and downs and we are always figuring new things out in perfecting the art. What has kept us successful over the past seven years has been us staying authentic to who we are.
You were featured on an episode of The Meat Show hosted by Nick Solares that went viral. He visited your kosher BBQ joint in the heart of Brooklyn after judging the Brisket King competition earlier in 2017 and declaring you the winner. You were able to go to places like Austin, see the meat, smell the sizzle but were not able to eat it because it wasn’t kosher yet you were still able to become a kosher pitmaster. What do you attribute that to?
I think it’s a work in progress; that you get better at every day. It can take 30 to 40 years to truly perfect the art of being a great pitmaster. Not being able to taste these foods drove me to a level where I try to get even better and where I am constantly trying to evolve.■
The writer, who received his undergraduate degree in business (cum laude) from Yeshiva University and his MBA with double distinction from Long Island University, is a financial adviser who resides in New York City and is involved in Israel-based and Jewish advocacy organizations