I’ll never forget the first time I went to Jack’s Wife Freda the spring semester I taught a writing class at NYU. It was late January 2019 and I had just had my first class there. Feeling pretty good about how that first class went, I decided to stop by the café on Lafayette after a brisk walk. I felt like I was walking into a movie set as people scurried inside out of the cold, removing hats, scarfs, and jackets while bear-hugging their coffee companions. It just seemed like such a warm cozy scene, amidst a cold New York winter. After one sip of the matzo ball soup, I wondered why I hadn’t found my way even sooner.
So many years later, I pop in when I can—now bebopping in and out of the Lafayette location—and am endlessly so fond of the environment that has so intentionally been nurtured. From gorgeous flower arrangements, cozy tables, and the hum of constant chatter, it always feels like the living room scene I often curate in in my head.
For more than a decade, Jack’s Wife Freda has occupied that uniquely New York space where geography begins to blur. Its menu has always resisted easy labels—Israeli, South African, Mediterranean, Jewish, Middle Eastern—because none of those words quite explain what’s happening. The restaurant is less interested in authenticity, less concerned with preserving recipes than preserving the reasons families cooked them in the first place.
That story begins with two names. Jack and Freda were Dean Jankelowitz’s grandparents in Johannesburg who were remembered for the feeling of abundance around the table, not just for a single recipe. They were remembered for their warmth, their generosity, for giving everyone a sense that there was always enough food for one more person. When naming a restaurant after them it wasn’t just an act of nostalgia but a challenge to bottle the feeling they always conveyed.
“We named the restaurant after them because their names carry a feeling more than a fact,” owner Maya Jankelowitz says. That feeling of being welcomed home. That’s still what we’re chasing every single day.”
Home for them, however, is not about one place. Dean was raised in South Africa and Maya was raised in Israel. Between them are family histories that stretch through Libya, Lithuania, England, Germany, Portugal, India, Mozambique and Eastern Europe before ultimately arriving in New York. But both insist that becoming New Yorkers transformed not only where they lived, but how they cooked.
“Israeli food is already a conversation between Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa,” Maya says. “South African food whispers of Mozambique, India, and Portugal. By the time it all lands on a plate in SoHo, it’s less a recipe and more of a love letter written in several languages at once.”
The menu at Jacks’ Wife Freda reflects that conversation. Shakshuka is enjoyed with Challah; green tomatillos infuse a dish with Middle Eastern roots; Peri peri carries Johannesburg onto New York plates; and the chopped Israeli salad is a given, as if a meal would feel incomplete without it. And the vibrant colors from all the different dishes on each table, in and of themselves, signal a global tapestry of flavors, spices, and aromas that are unmatched and captivating.
For Maya, certain dishes collapse time entirely. Schnitzel with mashed potatoes instantly brings her back to being 12 years old, walking home from school in Israel, still learning the language, still trying to find her footing. For Dean, it’s the unmistakable smell of peri peri chicken on the grill during childhood visits to Nando’s in Johannesburg. Those flavors became more than memories; they ultimately became the vocabulary of their restaurant.
Some recipes survived untouched despite crossing many borders: Chicken soup. Matzo Balls. Borscht. “They followed us here without asking permission.,” Maya says. Others evolved naturally with migration, absorbing new ingredients and influences along the way. That balance has become central to Jack’s Wife Freda’s identity. “Tradition is always going to be a part of us—it’s in our bones,” she says. “But we never wanted to be imprisoned by it either. We’re always gently holding onto who we were and gently imagining who we are becoming.”
That couldn’t be more evident than in Freda’s matzo ball soup. You will become transfixed, if not, transported with one sip. At home, Maya still makes more chicken soup than she expects to need. Somehow it always finds its purpose: a container for a sick neighbor; one tucked away in the freezer for a rainy Tuesday; or another makes its way to someone who just needs a little extra comfort. Serving the same soup in the restaurant just feels like an extension of her family table.
However, the recipe that most represents her family history, she says, has yet to make the menu. Her grandmother carried bastilla–sweet and savory meat pies–from Tripoli, Libya to Israel during the 1930s. Maya’s mother continued making it, frying batch after batch, while the smell filled the house. As a child, Maya says she could never wait for dinner, always stealing pieces of it from the hot pan, despite always burning her fingers! Although she hasn’t made the menu at the restaurant yet, she has made it for staff, a bite that keeps those special memories alive.
For Maya, food lives as much in the body as it does the mind. “What I hope we’re preserving is the feeling underneath the recipe,” she says. “The generosity. The instinct to feed people before they even know they are hungry. That part is non-negotiable.” Everything else, like the seasonings, the techniques, the presentation can evolve.
“My grandmother made bastilla in Tripoli, my mother made it in Israel, and I made it in a New York restaurant kitchen just to see what would happen. Each version was an act of love–just with a different return address.”
In many ways, that’s also the story of Jack’s Wife Freda itself. What began as an homage to two grandparents has become part of thousands of New Yorkers’ own family rituals. Regulars stop by not only to eat but to say Hello. The restaurant has become the setting for first dates, anniversaries, celebrations, even heartbreaks, Sunday brunches, or just an ordinary afternoon coffee.
“We arrived in this city with no family here, “Maya says. “Somehow we built five places that feel more like home every single day—for us and for every guest who walks in searching for the same thing.”
If Jack and Freda could walk through the doors today, Maya imagines they’d recognize something familiar. Freda might smile at the name above the door. Jack would appreciate there being enough food to serve whomever stops by.
In the end, that’s the purpose of what Maya and Dean do. They are not just preserving recipes. They preserve the feeling of a table where everyone belongs.
