From the NY Times:
If You Build a Restaurant, He Will Not Come
February 18, 2004
By HOWARD KAPLAN
A MAN named Ira Glustein casually mentioned recently that
he had never eaten in a restaurant. The remark came up in a
telephone conversation with this reporter, who had called
about an unrelated matter. Mr. Glustein, who gave his age
vaguely as "late 50's," lives in the Borough Park section
of Brooklyn. He said he has lived in New York all his life.
Never eaten in a restaurant? The statement had the surprise
wallop of a Ripley's Believe It or Not item. New York City
has more than 15,000 restaurants. How does a person avoid,
over the course of six decades, stopping for a bite in at
least one or two?
Some of the most observant Hasidic communities in the
United States claim large followings of restaurant
avoiders, said Rabbi Berel Karniol, the director of an
agency in Monsey, N.Y., that certifies kosher kitchens.
These are Jews so punctilious in their observance of the
food laws that even kosher restaurants get the thumbs down.
Mr. Glustein is Orthodox, but he does not belong to one of
those groups. He has his own reasons for not eating in
restaurants.
He scoffs at the idea that he is a marvel. Why anyone,
least of all a newspaper reporter, would care about a
certain little quirk of his, is beyond him. "The thing
doesn't even bear talking about," he said.
This is partly modesty, and partly something else. Mr.
Glustein is a believer in the evil eye. To put his name
before the public, he said, is to risk unspecified personal
disaster.
In this case, he was willing to take that risk, but only on
one condition, he said: that any mention of his dining
habits also include a word about his little-known
profession.
Mr. Glustein is a shatnes tester. In Jewish law, it is
forbidden to wear a garment containing wool and linen. In
Hebrew, this unholy blend is called shatnes.
In Mr. Glustein's words: "My vocation is shatnes - removing
linen from wool clothing or wool from linen clothing. The
majority of the shatnes that we find today is in men's
expensive suits, usually in the collar. It's easy to remove
by an expert, and it's just a small tailoring job to
repair. It doesn't change the beauty or quality of the
suit."
Mr. Glustein said many Jews, devout ones included, have
never heard of shatnes, even though it is mentioned in two
places in the Torah and is no less binding than the dietary
laws. A shatnes garment is equivalent to tref, or food
unfit for a kosher table.
Mr. Glustein agreed, not without ambivalence, to meet at Le
Marais, a kosher steak house on West 46th Street, to answer
a few questions. During the interview, he appeared ill at
ease, his chair so far from the linen-covered table that he
was forced to hunch over his glass of ginger ale. It was
the one bit of nourishment he put to his lips.
He began by quietly dropping a bombshell. In 1964, he ate
in a restaurant. "I just had chopped liver and eggs," he
said. "I was with somebody who wanted to eat in a
restaurant."
A second bombshell followed right after. Another such
episode had occurred before this one, in 1963. "I was alone
that time," Mr. Glustein said. "I ate in the back. There
was no one else around. I think I had a scoop of potatoes."
But other than those two aberrations - nothing.
"Maybe I'm a nut," Mr. Glustein said. "No, I don't think
I'm a nut. I think it's just an approach, an attitude,
toward eating in public. It's a familial thing. My mother
was the same way."
His mother never ate in a restaurant?
"Not to my knowledge," Mr. Glustein said.
His father?
"He also not. No. He never went to restaurants."
Why?
"It was never discussed in the family," he said. "No one
spoke about it. But it was an obvious thing not to do. I
guess the reason is - and I feel this way very strongly
myself: Let's say you walked in one end and you had to eat
on the other end and there were people at every single
table and you walked until you got to your spot.
"What do you do along the way? Are you only going to look
at the floor, the ceiling, the wall, or people's faces?
Obviously you would peer into other people's plates. Just a
quick glance. But if someone sets his eyes on my plate, I
can't eat it anymore. Therefore I'm going to stay out of
public eating."
A waiter approached just then to take orders. Mr. Glustein
had none to give, and the waiter walked away with only one.
Mr. Glustein told a story: "I had an incident a while back.
I have a friend, I worked with him, and he was a big
peerer. P-E-E-R-E-R. He'd say, 'What are you eating?' A
fine fellow, a good worker, but a peerer!
"Anyway, I ended the day and I was famished. So I went into
this place that has take-home food. And who walks in but my
buddy the peerer. I did an about-face and walked right out.
Because I know he's going to look into what I get. And I
just went home hungry. But I felt comfortable with that
hunger, because the peerer is not going to peer."
Mr. Glustein's wife makes him dinner most nights.
Soon
the waiter returned with the one meal ordered. a vegetarian
dish called Napoleon de legumes. Was Mr. Glustein bothered
by the sight?
"Bothered by what you're eating?" he asked. "Absolutely
not. Nah. I don't even see it."
If anything bothered him, it was the thought of what lay
ahead once the name Glustein appeared in a newspaper. "I
know some people who after publicity went downhill all the
way," he said. "It's frightening. Really downhill. I know a
guy who was sitting pretty in what he was doing, and they
wrote an article about how successful he was. I spoke to
his wife's father, who I know well. He says, 'Since that
article, he's out of business.' If you spell my name wrong,
I'd really appreciate it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/dining/18REFU.html?ex=1078130108&ei=1&en=4a01926d4336c486
