Kosher falafel restaurant opens at new Google complex in Manhattan

To get the signature tahini shake from Mike Solomonov’s Goldie Falafel, New Yorkers have always had to head to the sixth borough of Philadelphia. Now, they just have to land a job at Google.

Solomonov quietly opened the first New York City outpost of Goldie, a kosher falafel spot, inside Google’s highly-anticipated new Manhattan campus on Monday, the first day of the tech company’s operations inside St John’s Terminal in Hudson Square at what was once the end of the High Line elevated train line.

It’s the third replica of the Jewish chef’s Israeli-inspired restaurants in the city, after Laser Wolf and K’far Cafe opened on the rooftop and the lobby of the Hoxton Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2022.

The catch: only Google employees and their guests can shop at the new Goldie. “Happy to confirm that we do have cafes in the new office and that Goldie is among them,” a company spokesperson confirmed to the New York Jewish Week.

It’s not the only amenity that Google has arranged for the roughly 3,000 employees who will work out of the new 12-story office building. The location — the company’s third in the city — features outdoor terraces looking out over a panoramic view of the Hudson river, a meditation garden, spin studios and a luxury locker room alongside meeting rooms and work spaces of every shape and variation.

Goldie, which has five locations in Philadelphia, made headlines in December when pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the Rittenhouse Square outpost of the kosher chain to shout: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, called it “a blatant act of antisemitism”.

Solomonov was born in Israel and raised in Pittsburgh, then returned to Israel to kick off his culinary career, which he has parlayed into a network of restaurants all riffing on Israeli cuisine. He has said that he decided to focus on Jewish and Israeli food after his brother David was killed while serving in the Israeli army in 2003.

New Yorkers wanting to try Goldie’s signature products have one other local option: Solomonov’s hummus is newly available at Whole Foods Markets across the Northeast.