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He grew up accidentally cutting himself with oyster knives. So he designed a better one.
Advertisement Whitman's design knowledge was enhanced while working at Snap-on, a designer and manufacturer of automotive and trade industry tools. 'Shucking is a skill,' he says, 'and a full-body experience. I wanted to make it a little more ergonomic for the novice.' Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Once you've cracked open that mollusk, Whitman has another creation: Oyster Coasters. Made of food-grade stamped aluminum with an oxidized finish, these oval coasters are designed to keep the bivalves upright so you don't lose a drop of their precious liquid. First, pop the coasters into the freezer. In the end, they'll look charming arranged on a platter while keeping the oysters chilled, too. Advertisement OCK Oyster Knife is $50; Oyster Coasters, six for $24. Available at , where you'll also find a tutorial on how to shuck. Additionally, 1 percent of annual sales is donated to the Wellfleet Oyster Alliance. Ann Trieger Kurland can be reached at
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A vegan caviar is making waves
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up The result is Zeroe Caviar, a plant-based alternative to fish roe made from seaweed. This seaweed is grown organically and harvested sustainably off the southern coast of France. After a clean water wash, it's processed near Copenhagen and turned into shiny, deep black, delicate pearls resembling Beluga caviar. Place a dollop in your mouth, and they'll pop with a salty taste reminiscent of real caviar, but without a fishy flavor. Advertisement Initially, Traisman planned to give jars of his vegan caviar away as gifts. After a few chefs tried it, word spread, and Zeroe Caviar began appearing at Michelin-starred restaurants, such as at Daniel in New York City, as well as other high-end dining spots. Traisman says, 'It was an accidental, unintentional business.' Advertisement One 1.76-ounce jar for $42; two jars for $70.56; four jars for $80.64. Available at . Ann Trieger Kurland can be reached at
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Jewish deli dream becomes reality in Northampton
'It is this homage to where we all come from, and how we got where we all are today, and the food we grew up with,' Hanley says. 'There's such a nostalgia connected to it that is so deep.' Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up The new deli was eight years in the making, starting around 2017 when Lichter and Levin, both music managers, teamed up to work with the folk trio Advertisement 'It was something that we continuously were joking about with each other, just to entertain ourselves and give our brains a break from thinking about our music work,' says Lichter, who also manages The menu at Lichter & Levin Delicatessen includes sweet treats like these cookies. Yasmina Mattison In 2019, they pushed the idea further by commissioning a logo, coming up with a slogan ('open for brunch and linner') and printing up hoodies and T-shirts, purely to amuse themselves. That November, they posted photos of the merch on a new Lichter & Levin Instagram page with the tongue-in-cheek caption 'coming soon.' The post went 'small-town viral,' Lichter says, prompting a story in the local newspaper. The surge of buzz about the possibility of a deli coming to Northampton reached Wynn, who owned a café called the Roost that she had been thinking of converting into one. 'When those posts hit Instagram in 2019, I was shaken in my boots,' says Wynn, who opened the Roost in 2011. 'I was like, someone's going to open a Jewish deli in Northampton. The Roost will be out of business in five minutes.' Though Lichter and Levin ended up meeting with a few potential partners, the timing was off: before they could seriously pursue it, the pandemic arrived. By 2023, the pair had come back to the idea, but were exploring locations in Connecticut and New York. Meanwhile, Hanley, a classically trained chef with a background in fine dining in New York, had recently moved to Western Mass. and was looking to open a deli. Through community connections, Hanley met Wynn and came to work at the Roost while they plotted how to overhaul the coffee shop into something new. Advertisement Lighted signs mounted to the wall inside Lichter & Levin Delicatessen in Northampton. Yasmina Mattison 'Café business, the model is tough,' says Wynn, who moved to Northampton in 2009 after a decade performing in the Long Island hip-hop trio Northern State. 'It was always tough. It was never a very profitable business. It was kind of break-even at best. But then the pandemic really put me underwater, and there was really no way to climb out of that.' Hanley and Wynn worked up a deli pitch to show to possible investors. They were introduced to Lichter and Levin through mutual acquaintances on the Shluggers, the local synagogue's softball team. One of them was Matt Wool, a New York-born deli enthusiast who had bought a Lichter & Levin hoodie when they first became available. He joined Lichter and Levin for a meeting with Hanley and Wynn late in 2024. A food tasting followed on a frigid evening in December, where a small group sampled Hanley's food: whitefish salad, briny house-cured lox, knishes, tangy half-sour pickles with just the right snap, vegan pastrami, hearty matzo ball soup, and desserts including mini-babkas, rugelach, and black-and-white cookies. 'The combination of food was so spot-on,' says Levin, who also manages the band Lucius, singer Aoife O'Donovan and others as part of Good Harbor Music. 'This was exactly what we had wanted, and what we had jokingly talked about back in 2017 and '18.' With Hanley, Lichter, Levin, and Wool going in as partners, Wynn closed the Roost in March. She went to work for Lichter & Levin and turned over the space, which she owns, to the deli for a facelift. The new design features royal blue paint and white subway tile. One wall is covered with old snapshots of the owners' grandparents and great-grandparents — the ones who ran butcher shops and delis. There are also archival photographs, curated with help from the Historic Northampton museum, depicting Jewish life in town and the history of the building, which once shared a parking lot with Advertisement The fact that three separate groups were interested in opening a New York-style deli before they joined forces suggests that there's a market for it in Western Massachusetts. More than that, though, it's the kind of restaurant the Lichter & Levin team wanted to exist where they live. For them, opening a deli is a way of forging closer ties with their community in a way that links them to their family traditions. 'There's a Yiddish term 'bashert,' which roughly translates to 'meant to be,'' Levin says. 'In all of our family histories, you can draw a line to serving food to people. That connection to where we all come from, combined with the comfort of having a place like this right here in the community, is why I'm doing it.'
