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NYC Bar Exam Price Gouging $53 Kosher Sandwiches!

The New York State Bar Examination will be administered in person at locations around the state, starting tomorrow July 26 & 27, 2022. For those in NYC taking the exam at the Jacob Javits Center in the Midtown West area of Manhattan, be prepared to take out loans for your lunch.

Due to strict rules allowing bar examinees a severely limited number of items into the exam center, lunch meals are being offered to test takers at extremely inflated prices, with kosher consumers paying the greatest price. According to the security policy, the only foods allowed for examinees are:

  • Quiet snacks (unwrapped in clear food bag) and one beverage in a clear and re-sealable one-liter plastic bottle with all labels removed

This does not leave much for candidates to eat over lunch during the 12-hour exam (split up into 2 days), nearly requiring examinees to purchase on-site meals at elevated prices. To be clear, the menu for what’s offered at the Javits Center is grossly high for both non-kosher and kosher meals, but with kosher meals a full $20 more, it takes price gouging to a new level. All non-kosher meals are listed at $33 and the two kosher options are at $53, provided by the on-site caterer Cultivated, which surely imports their kosher sandwiches from elsewhere.

Kosher meals provided by Cultivated are kosher certified by the Star-K. For those that did not pre-order meals, a limited amount of additional kosher items will be available on site.

This whole situation makes a farce of the airport prices of meals, which were mocked by Jerry Seinfeld as being too expensive in the ’90s for selling $9 tuna sandwiches. If only!

>>> Click here for the menu available for the Bar Exam at the Javits Center in NYC

For examinees who want an alternative option to paying $106 + tax for both days, there’s a nearby kosher-certified eatery in the Hudson Yards neighborhood, Jajaja Mexicana, a vegan Mexican eatery, located inside Whole Foods on W33rd street & 10th Ave. Exam takers have a one-hour lunch break, at can make the walk in under 10 minutes.

H/T @jewlicious

About the author

Dani Klein

Dani Klein founded YeahThatsKosher in 2008 as a global kosher restaurant & travel resource for the Jewish community.

He is passionate about traveling the world, good kosher food / restaurants, social media & the web, technology, hiking, strategy games, and spending time with his friends & family.