BEIJING - Beijing and the Olympics are going Kosher.
The capital's only Kosher restaurant opened 10 months ago, drawing the small Jewish expatriate community, tourists, curious Chinese and even a few Muslims.
Business has been so good at Dini's Kosher Restaurant, that part-owner Lewis Sperber is talking about setting up a second branch closer to the Olympic venues in northern Beijing.
Like many restaurateurs and bar owners, Sperber is hoping to benefit with as many as 550,000 foreigners expected to descend on Beijing for the August 8-24 Games.
"What we've thought about is preparing sandwiches and other items at a venue closer than we are now to the Olympic sites," Sperber said. "If people leave the Olympics and want a Kosher meal, we could have a place for them."
Eating Kosher - food that meets Jewish dietary laws - is hardly a raging fad. However, there is a real boom in the number of Chinese factories being certified to export Kosher products.
Kosher certifications in China conducted by the Orthodox Union - the best-known certification body - have doubled to 307 in the last two years. The total number of Kosher certifications is about 2,000, exporters working to reach the world Kosher market.
"I think business will be very overwhelming during the Olympics," said Minette Ramia, who manages Dini's, a modern, pastel-colored eatery located on Super Bar Street, an aptly named alleyway lined with restaurants and bars just down the street from the Israeli embassy.
"From the hygiene side, whether someone is Kosher or not, Jewish or not, people will want food from here because it is considered cleaner and more hygienic," Ramia said.
The staff and cooks at Dini's are nearly all Chinese. Waiters bring new Chinese customers a handout to explain Kosher, which is called "Jie Shi" in Chinese, meaning "clean food."
"When Chinese come, I don't think they know what to order," said Zhao Haixia, the assistant manager. "Normally they just rely on us to tell them what's good."
The menu features both northern European (Ashkenazi) and Mediterranean (Sephardic) food traditions. Mainstays like matzo ball soup, chopped liver and Gefilte fish are seldom chosen by Chinese, who more often go for Kosher beef dumplings (Jiaozi) or sizzling beef Kosher style.
At least one of the new monitoring systems - coding on packaging to trace the source of production - has long been required for Kosher certification.
"The fact that there is another set of eyes coming through the plants on a regular basis, such as the Kosher auditing or Kosher supervisors, means that the companies, the factories are more careful about hygiene and sanitation," said Rabbi Mordechai Grunberg, who examines Chinese factories for the Orthodox Union.
China's Kosher exports are composed almost exclusively of food additives, spices, vegetables and candies.
The Jewish population in mainland China is only a few thousand and exclusively expatriates -1,500 in Beijing, 1,000 in Shanghai and 500 in Guangzhou.
Several thousand more are scattered in small cities with 4,000 in Hong Kong. Historians suggest a small Chinese Jewish community existed centuries ago in the central city of Kaifeng.
Grunberg is optimistic a domestic Kosher market will develop in China.
"I think there will be a big market here, and a big market could mean just a fraction of a percent of 1.3 billion. With only that you'll have a bigger market than we have for Kosher in the United States."
Both Kosher and Halal - food prepared following Islamic religious rules - will be available at the Olympic Athletes Village, a requirement of the International Olympic Committee. T
The Philadelphia-based company Aramark is running the catering operation and will serve 17,000 athletes and officials at dining rooms capable of feeding 6,000 at once on a 24-hour schedule.
The Olympic Kosher kitchen is being lined up by Rabbi Freundlich, the rabbi of Beijing's Jewish community.
"I would be the overall supervisor of the kitchen and have a number of colleagues helping me maintain the Kosher standard throughout the Olympics," he said. "We'd expect to serve 300-400 meals a day, more than twice what I'm told was served in Athens."
