Illustrations by Esti Friedman

How do you feed your love of food and hospitality while avoiding the headache of managing a restaurant or a catering business? You do what Roee Mordechai and Sharona Furman did. Apron Masters Kitchen empowers the regular man (or woman, or child) to have fun experimenting in a kitchen without borders. The pair brought in a new food-related activity to the kosher consumer, proving you can make your food and eat it too.

Where do your food origins begin?

Roee: I’ve always been known as the food lover in my family. When I was 14 years old, when my mother told me to run over to Ruthie’s, a quaint pastry shop in Cedarhurst. Ruthie was my mother’s friend from years back and needed help, so she gave me my first employment opportunity. I’d always wanted to work, and a job at Ruthie’s was something I was up to even though I was so young and had zero experience. In the beginning I was working the counters. In under a year, I was training other workers and managing the place.

Sharona: As a child, my house was always bustling with friends and cousins coming over to visit, and there was always tons of food on the table. We had Bukharian delicacies like bachsh, which is green rice with cilantro, and mantu, meat dumplings. I was around ten when I joined my mom in the kitchen.

Where did you come up with the concept of Apron Masters?

Roee: I always had it in the back of my mind to create something like this because it exists in the secular world, but there are no options that are kosher. It took a lot of planning. We collaborated with a designer, Leni Calas, who took our ideas and made sure everything would work out like we envisioned it would. The most important thing to us was that it should be warm and inviting, a real kitchen feel.

I’ve always loved the food industry, but I never wanted to enter the catering or restaurant business. From the time I worked in Ruthie’s, I saw that it brings a level of stress that I wasn’t ready to include in my life. Yet people love homemade food and are always excited to learn new skills. Our business really helps the customer create their own culinary experience. It’s not about becoming a professional chef; it’s about tapping into your culinary soul.

Sharona: Let’s say you want to host all your kids and grandkids for a meal. You wouldn’t dream of getting it catered because you want the food to have the taste of home. Instead, you come to Apron Masters. Our kitchen is kosher (we are under the Vaad HaKashrus of Five Towns), familiar (we use regular appliances, not restaurant-level ovens and burners, to give an example), and welcoming. We have a beautiful dining area. You can invite your family to be part of the meal. An added bonus is when you have an instructor teach you how to cook the items you want to serve on the menu you created on your own. Everyone participates. Everyone eats. We get left with the cleanup!

Sounds exhausting. How do you have time, and where did you get the experience to teach all that?

Sharona: (laughs) I’m a pharmacist by trade and have been for over 20 years. We had the vision of what Apron Masters would look like, but since we don’t have as much professional experience, we hired the best of the best. Our culinary director is Naomi Ross, who teaches a majority of the classes.

In the summer we had a program called the “Teen Apprenticeship.” It was a month long, and every day the kids came from ten to three to learn something new, from cutting skills to sushi making. Victorinox sponsored a set of knives to give each kid at the end of the course.

Roee: Naomi is an expert in all things food, but when we want to teach our students a special skill, during any class for any age, we bring in guest chefs who teach things like food decorating, bread making, and more. It was so appreciated by the community because camps closed last minute, and this saved the summer for a lot of kids. Everything was COVID safety-regulated too.