Jersey Shore’s Pier Village to Launch Upscale Kosher Eatery ‘Salt’

SALT Bar and Grill is a 5,500-square-foot upscale kosher steakhouse at Pier Village, the oceanfront retail, restaurant, hotel, and condominium complex in Long Branch, New Jersey owned by the Kushner Companies. The restaurant is owned by David Mizrahi, who also operates the fast-casual LBK Grill at the Wave Resort and two restaurants in Lakewood. SALT opened for the 2021 beach season with an extensive wine list and oceanfront eat-in dining, part of a new phase of Pier Village development adding amenities for the Shore’s kosher-keeping clientele for the second season in a row.

We did. SALT Steakhouse is part of the HH Designers hospitality portfolio, and it anchors much of our published thinking on restaurant design — the same discipline of covers, check average, bar placement, acoustics, and lighting that we document in our complete restaurant design guide was applied to a fine-dining kosher steakhouse on the Jersey Shore. The project sits alongside our other hospitality work, from cafes to full-service dining rooms, and reflects our approach of designing rooms that photograph beautifully while performing operationally through every service.

The front of house must read as fine dining first — a bar, a serious wine display, oceanfront seating — because the kosher diner is paying for a full steakhouse experience, not a compromise. The back of house carries the additional layer: kitchen and storage layouts planned for kashrus supervision, with workspace for the mashgiach and separation that the certifying agency can approve. On the Shore, hashgacha is a practical operating reality — Mizrahi’s LBK Grill operates under the Vaad of the Jersey Shore — so the kitchen plan, receiving flow, and equipment schedule need to anticipate supervision requirements from the first drawing, not after the hood is installed.

Because it built a complete range of kosher hospitality in one oceanfront destination. The Wave Resort offers accommodations for Shabbat-observant guests; LBK Grill supplies the fast-casual tier — burgers, fries, nachos, and sandwiches that make Long Branch an easy beach day for kosher-keeping families; and SALT added the fine-dining tier with steakhouse cuisine and an extensive wine list. The Kushner Companies added these kosher amenities in consecutive seasons, and LBK’s first-summer success is what convinced Mizrahi to expand permanently into Pier Village retail. Few destinations on the East Coast offer that casual-to-upscale kosher spectrum steps from the boardwalk.

Yes. We are headquartered in Toms River, New Jersey, with deep roots in the Shore’s kosher hospitality market and a national practice beyond it. Our restaurant work spans fast-casual concepts through fine-dining steakhouses, and in kosher projects we bring both sides of the brief: the revenue mechanics of restaurant design — seating mix, bar economics, acoustics, lighting — and the operational realities of a supervised kitchen, from separation of prep zones to the mashgiach’s workflow. If you are planning a kosher restaurant, the certifying agency’s requirements should shape the kitchen plan from day one, and we design with that conversation already underway.