UCAFE

U Café is a fine, European-style kosher dairy café on the Upper East Side.

It is both a local and a global watering hole, an oasis, a village well, where people from all over the world meet people for a meal, a conversation, a celebration - or on a “first date.”  Sometimes, when it's quiet, a writer can just sit there and read, as if they lived in Paris, Rome, Warsaw, Vienna, Tel Aviv, or on the lower east side of New York City - but long ago, when a writer had a favorite café where he or she could read their newspapers, pen articles and books, meet other writers to argue, plan revolutions, initiate love affairs, and to dream.

Stop in - and you might find yourself sitting next to the Israeli singer and world renowned Cantor, Dudu Fisher, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, Cantor Yosef  Malovany, Knesset member Ya’akov Katz, author Phyllis Chesler, or Israeli-American fashion designer Rickie Freeman, the founder of the beloved line of clothing, Teri Jon.  But you might also strike up a conversation with one of the many lawyers and judges who frequent the café - yes, including Judge Judy.  Black hats galore might be talking and laughing in several languages at one table, while tourists from Japan, Europe, and Israel are dining nearby.  Passersby, who are not necessarily Jewish or keep kosher, stop, look, are drawn in - and end up returning again and again.

U Café is many things to many different people.  For the people who live nearby, it is the Jewish and neighborhood equivalent of the Frenchman’s restaurant, the bistro where he or she has his or her table and takes all his or her meals.  These are the Upper East Side “regulars”: psycho-analysts, Torah scholars, rabbis, Mt Sinai and Sloan Kettering physicians, sculptors, painters, party-planners, businessmen and women, mothers with young children, young grandmothers, young great-grandmothers, senior citizens, whom you may always find there: sipping one of the delicious home-made soups, (French-onion, carrot, or sweet pea), devouring one of the creatively prepared fish dishes (salmon teriyaki or salmon pineapple),  lingering over one of the fabulously original desserts.  Many neighborhood residents often invite their entire families from the outer boroughs or from Long Island and New Jersey for lunch or dinner.  The staff knows them by name, knows what they love to eat.

If it is more than just a meal you seek, you can always join the frequent Cantorial Kumzitz and concerts that take place at U Café.

Small miracles abound.  For example, five separate couples have already chosen U Café for their “first dates.” All five eventually married.  And all return to the Café once a month to celebrate their happiness.

“Once, a year ago, I got a phone call from Jerusalem” Pini, the executive chef recalls.  “A woman wanted a reservation for fifteen people for Sunday brunch at 10:30 a.m.  I thought it must be a joke.  Who would call all the way from Israel to make such a reservation?  By 10:25, no one had yet arrived but I decided, let’s set the tables anyway - and just as we finished, in walked the woman from Israel.  She explained that this was a family reunion, but the family members had never met each other before that day.  Relatives walked in from Texas, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Israel.  They stayed for lunch too.”

U Café also has book readings and book signings.  Recently, Jayne Cohen signed her book “Jewish Holiday Cooking” and prepared some of her recipes for all to try and enjoy.  Jerry Glanz, Cantor Leibele Glanz’s son, read from the biography of his father, “The Man Who Spoke to God,” a book which he carefully and lovingly wrote.

U Café is a family collaboration and a labor of love.  Haifa-born Cyna Ben-Ari decorated the Café, chose the colors, the furniture, and the carefully framed Parisian prints.  Her husband, Pini, is also Haifa-born.  He artfully arranges the exquisite creations at the Café and continually dreams up new ones.  Recently, U Café won a prize for the “Best Kosher Sandwich” at the second annual Kosherfest convention.

But the Café is really Udi Ben Ari’s dream, Cyna and Pini’s youngest son.  Udi is the genial and quiet man behind it all.  Udi was born and bred in New York, but he studied hotel management in Israel and received a BA and an MBA at Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island.  When the family returned to New York, Udi worked as the banquet manager at the Westin Times  Square and as the Food and Beverage Manager at the Regent Wall Street Hotel and at the distinguished Lowell Hotel on the Upper East Side.

Three years ago, it was finally time.  Udi opened U Café.  He personally makes the desserts - you should try the bread puddings and pannecotta, they are simply unbelievable.  Udi also orders cakes fresh from Israel every day.  The cheeses are wonderful and arrive in highly artistic forms.

Yes, U Café caters events in grand style.  Count on them for private parties of all kinds including your Bar or Bat Mitzvah, a Brit Milah, a Baby Naming ceremony, Sheva Brachot,  a shul Kiddush, a shul dinner and other wonderful occasions that are enhanced with U Café’s creations.  The Café has seasoned waiters whom they send but Pini and Udi come themselves to make sure everything looks right, is right, and meets their wonderfully high standards.