Santa Barbara’s Latke King

“If you’re Jewish and at an event, I probably made the latkes,” Douglas Weinstein told me last week, as I watched him mix eggs with shredded potatoes in the kitchen of Congregation B’nai B’rith (CBB) in the hills above Santa Barbara. “I’ll be working on them for a couple hours every day for the next week.”

A lifelong professional cook, caterer, and cafe owner who now works in tech sales, Weinstein is making about 2,500 latkes for CBB and the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara this season. Both organizations host a number of parties each Hanukkah, which started on December 2 and ends December 10 this year, and Weinstein’s crisp potato pancakes are the stars of the show. 

Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the retaking of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Greeks in the second century BCE. The Jews found only one urn of olive oil to light the temple’s menorah, but it miraculously lasted for eight days, long enough for a new batch of oil to be made. Known today as the “festival of lights,” Hanukkah is celebrated by lighting the menorah each night and eating fried foods. That includes jelly doughnuts and latkes, which became a popular holiday treat in Eastern Europe during the 1800s. Said Weinstein, “Anything fried is a mitzvah.”