Yogurtland, a leading frozen yogurt chain, is following the lead of Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins and The Coffee Bean and has launched its first kosher store, the Beverly Connection location in Los Angeles.

The store is under the kosher supervision of the Rabbinical Council of California, according to the Kosher Today newsletter.

Yogurtland’s self-serve frozen yogurt shops allow customers to approach a wall of sweet and tart yogurt flavors and a topping bar. Paying by the ounce, consumers can choose among 16 yogurt flavors to create their own frozen treat and top it off their way.

“Certified kosher frozen yogurt from Yogurtland will be a welcomed treat for the kosher community,” said Rabbi Yaakov Vann, Director of Kashrut Services for the Rabbinical Council of California.

All of Yogurtland’s flavors are produced in a kosher-certified facility.

Israeli restaurants and hotels are more interested n seeking kosher certification from the American-based Orthodox Union (OU) in order to attract foreign tourists, according to the Kosher Today newsletter.

It said that many American Jewish tourists generally are more familiar with the OU than Israeli rabbinic certifications.

The OU operates in Israel in an office near downtown Jerusalem and has several kosher supervisors.

Not all restaurants are willing to accept OU supervision. Kosher Today noted that the La Cuisine restaurant decided to forfeit its OU certification for Passover rather than agree to its requirements for proper cleaning of the facility before the holiday.

A vegetarian food company in Britain has raised the hackles of rabbis by selling its certified kosher sausages without approval for adding flavoring that gave them the taste of pork.

The same company also sold a kosher certified vegetarian product with the flavor of shrimp.

“It makes me sick when I think of people who drool for something that looks like and smells like the real thing, referring to non-kosher “treif” foods, said one rabbi quoted by the New York-based Kosher Today newsletter.

He declared, “My stomach turned when I saw a [kosher certification] ‘hechsher’ on kosher shrimp.”

Many American rabbis and even the venerable Orthodox Union (OU) have allowed many foods to retain a kosher certification even if the flavors give them the taste of non-kosher food.

However, the Manchester rabbinical council that certified the Redwood Whole Foods as kosher also had that the kosher symbol not be used on precuts that are flavored to taste like non-kosher foods, such as pork and shrimp.

In Israel, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger two years ago gave his blessing for a unique goose species that tastes exactly like pork. The species was introduced by Spanish farmers, and the Chief Rabbi ruled that the meat is totally kosher.

He cited a Talmudic source that God provided a kosher substitute with the same taste as its non-kosher counterpart.

Rabbi Metzger said at the time that observant Jews  may be “disgusted” when first tasting kosher meat with the taste of pork but that they “eventually get used to it.”

The number of travelers requesting kosher meals continues to rise, and requests for glatt kosher meals has more than doubled in the past five years, according to one source.

Several travel agents reached by KosherToday concur that the number of travelers requesting kosher food has risen throughout the world and the airlines and the airline catering industry are apparently responding.

In Canada, Gate Gourmet, a Swiss-headquartered company that serves 14 major airlines at Trudeau, including Air Canada, recently opened a kosher kitchen supervised by MK of Montreal. Gate Gourmet operates a similar kosher kitchen at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport serving more 15 airlines, including El Al Israel Airlines.

In Montreal, Gate Gourmet is already considering extending its kosher services beyond the airline industry, to perhaps retailers, institutions or even large private events, as it has been doing in Toronto.

In Britain, Hermolis caterers, the exclusive kosher airline service of British Air as well as many other airline carriers from China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, is said to have significantly expanded its operations in the past five years.

Approximately 60,000 Americans and Canadians will spend more than $200 million this Passover, and many of those with enough money are hiring a chef to cook for them in rented private homes in resorts, Kosher Today reported.

Scottsdale, Arizona’s Biltmore is sold out with nearly 1,000 guests coming next week, while many other Americans will celebrate the freedom from slavery at resorts and hotels in Europe and in Israel.

Jay Buchsbaum of Kedem told Kosher Today that more people are demanding not only better foods but also upscale wines. “They no longer are solidified with the Kiddush and sweet wines; they want cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cognac and champagne.” he said.

Hatched fears of a chicken shortage for Passover because of a one-day shutdown at Empire Kosher’s poultry plant are not even worth chickenfeed, according to an industry source.

Empire shut down its large Mifflintown, Pa. plant on Monday a week ago, either because the chickens were underweight or had leg problems that made them non-kosher, depending on which version is believed.

Haaretz quoted a Brooklyn supermarket meat manager that shortages have plagued consumers the past two weeks even without the shutdown.

However, Kosher Today reported this week that the near-panic is nothing more than ruffled feathers.

It said that kosher food sources that although prices have increased by as much as 20 percent, “there will be an ample supply of chickens for the holiday.”

Empire has resumed production, and the Mehadrin Poultry plant, which shut down in Birsboro, Pa. last year, is reopening and may add as many as 35,000 kosher birds a day.

“If my math is correct, there will be even more supply than last year,” a leading expert in kosher poultry said.

A portable kosher barbeque rig is giving New York and the East Coast a taste of the backyard BBQ of yesteryear.

“There’s no one else doing this,” Got Cholent? president Ari White told Kosher Today. “I’m making it my mission to liberate New York’s kosher community from the exile of the great barbeque.” Gemstone catering, a division of Got Cholent? and under Star-K kosher supervision, is providing “pop-up” barbeque catering for events.

“Most Orthodox New Yorkers tend to marinate their steak in some store bought sauce and call it ‘barbeque’,” said the Texas-born White. “But for something to really be barbequed, it needs to be wood-smoked, and there’s no way to fake that genuine, barbequed taste.”

He calls himself the “pit boss” over the “Texas Roadside Smokehouse BBQ.”

White remembers his father and their rabbi smoking 40 turkeys for 5 days straight to prepare for the holidays. “My grandfather was an avid ‘smoker,’ and he passed this on to me and my father. When I moved from El Paso to New York, I knew the tri-state area would appreciate what real barbeque means — I just had to get them to taste it,” he stated.

His 2-ton wood-burning “HaKodesh Barbeque” provides “pop-up” barbeques, complete with a dining tent, bales of hay and country music.

“At our first pop-up in Riverdale, we served more than 3,000 people in four afternoons, and we had to turn away hundreds more,” according to White. “We had a similar smashing success in Westchester’s Lincoln Park.”

HaKodesh Barbeque will be making appearances in New York’s street fairs a week after Pesach and will be the first kosher “smoker” to compete in the Food Network’s Brisket King NYC competition.

New Yorkers will have a chance to feast on mid-city barbeques at upcoming street fairs, starting with an April 7 event at Union Square.

On Yom HaAtzmaut, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis can’t get through the Independence Day holiday without a cookout on the coals, White will serve’em up at a location to be announced later.

A large barbeque event also is scheduled for Philadelphia in early June.

For the first time, this winter’s Super Bowl in New Orlean’s Superdome will feature kosher food for sale, according to a report in Kosher Today last week.

Kosher Sports Inc, certified by Star-K Kosher, will provide kosher hot dogs at this year’s Super Bowl, after having provided kosher concessions to the US Open and games by the Baltimore Orioles, Baltimore Ravens, and Philadelphia Eagles.

Hermolis Caterers provided almost 3,000 kosher packaged meals for athletes, staff, and journalists at this year’s summer Olympics in London – the biggest sporting event to feature kosher food – with other kosher vendors selling meals to Olympics attendees.