Eating and drinking courtside in Cedarhurst

A pair of lifelong Five Towns residents plan on transforming the former site of the Brasserie Halevi eatery into a sports-themed kosher restaurant that will cater to families who want to watch sports as they eat and drink.

Joey Hoenig and Steve Kuritzky are behind “The Courtside Grill” that plans on opening later in the spring, hopefully by the time of the NBA playoffs, said Hoenig, who along with Kuritzky coaches the varsity boys’ Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway (HAFTR) Hawks basketball team.

Hoenig, who lives in Lawrence, also is HAFTR’s athletic director. In the summer, he and his wife, Jenny, run Camp Lavi in the Pocono Mountains. Kuritzky, a Woodmere resident, is a lawyer, who also runs the Five Towns Basketball League with Hoenig that they established in 2010.

“We closed on the property two weeks ago and are now into the construction phase,” Hoenig said about the planned restaurant. “We will change the décor and there will be a lot of renovations.”

Plans are underway to take up the marble floor and install a wood surface, and redesign the site at 600 Central Ave. in Cedarhurst with sports memorabilia, along with 30 televisions. The TVs will obviously be tuned to sports and sports channels such as ESPN and there could be live streaming of yeshiva high school basketball games.

A lunch and dinner menu will be served, along with 15 different beers available on tap as well as many more in bottles and cans, Kuritzky said. “We first came up with this idea two years ago, looked at a couple locations, then had this opportunity to open a sports-themed restaurant in the neighborhood,” he said.

The partners stressed that this is not a sports bar. “It is a family restaurant with a bar, we are targeting families,” Kuritzky said. A place where even teens could stop by for lunch and watch ESPN for awhile before returning to school, the partners said.

Gathering to watch sports and eat and have a drink is not what the Five Towns is known for, and they are not common in a primarily Jewish community. When the Courtside Grill opens it would be only the third such kosher place in the metropolitan area, including the Prime Sushi @ The Promenade in Manhattan and the Teaneck Doghouse in Teaneck, NJ.

Both Hoenig and Kuritzky emphasized that the restaurant is under the supervision of the Five Towns Vaad that ensures eateries maintain kosher food standards. “We received a lot of information in our dealings with the Vaad,” Kuritzky said. “They were extremely cooperative and we could not be able to do this without them.”

The Vaad did not return a phone call for comment by press time.

Sid Langweil, co-owner of Ezra Pharmacy and the yogurt and ice cream store right next door to where the restaurant will be said the concept “sounds good.” “It gives people a place to go, socialize and get something to eat,” said Langweil, who has operated the pharmacy for 27 years.