Many moons ago, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (unless you bother scrolling to the very bottom of this post), had a brief stretch of working in a relatively upscale Mexican restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Although she was super broke at the time and desperately needed the job, there was the matter of the uniform… an oversized poncho.
It greatly offended her sense of style, not to mention her dignity, but at least, I told her, they’re not making you wear a sombrero and a droopy moustache like the Frito Bandito...
The concept of the “droopy” became a one-word catalyst that sees the two of us completely crack up whenever the other mentions it. One of those things, I suppose you had to be there, but I was reminded of this anecdote by finding out recently about the existence of the curious Jewish “theme” restaurant Pid Zolotoyu Rozoyu (“Under the Golden Rose”) restaurant in L’viv, Ukraine for reasons which are about to become quite obvious…
The restaurant itself is located next to the ruins of what had been the 350-year-old Golden Rose synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis with several Jews inside of it (150,000 Jews died in the L’viv ghetto during World War II). While you nosh on gefilte fish, pickled herring and matzoh ball soup, they will give you wool hats to wear with payot (curly side-locks worn by Hassidim) attached. Perhaps you’d like to enjoy the house drink, “The Funny Jew.” There are no prices on the menu, guests are expected to haggle with the waitstaff over the prices, and one might presume “jew them down.”
Such fun! Such biddy biddy bum!
The spot is one of fifteen so-called “emotional restaurants” owned by a company called !Fest who operate theme restaurants pertaining to such things as sadomasochism (Café Masoch‘s namesake, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, was born in L’viv) with kinky outfits on the wait staff, plus whips and chains; Kryjivka—which claims to be the single most visited restaurant in all of Europe, with one million annual covers—built in the bunker of the last hiding place of the ultranationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the password for entrance is “Glory to Ukraine” although “ethnic cleansing” probably would have sufficed); as well as an execution-themed charcuterie, replete with fine meats and a guillotine for just that right cut of meat… There is even an !Fest restaurant with a Freemasonry theme that has a special “throne” in the men’s room.
The crazy thing is, if you look at the !Fest enterprise as a whole, it doesn’t really appear that anti-Semitism per se is on the menu at Pid Zolotoyu Rozoyu. They obviously like to court controversy, and of course, it’s easy to argue that this is incredibly tacky, but the attitude of the owners—three guys in their late 20s/early 30s who have probably never even met a real Jew—seem to be that it’s “educational” and “historical” and that they’re simply running a cheeky tourist attraction. Few of L’viv’s remaining Jews tend to see it that way.
Oy vey…
Thank you kindly Oberon Sinclair and Andrew Deutsch!
