Long-Distance Kosher

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Nir Weinblut, one of the premier local kosher chefs, recently returned from a trip to Dubai, where he cooked meals for some of the region’s pre-eminent dignitaries.

But he almost missed the opportunity entirely.

When arranging a group trip to the Arab emirate earlier this year, a representative of the Museum of Tolerance asked Weinblut to ship kosher food there for them. The 43-year-old owner of La Gondola in Beverly Hills instead e-mailed a suggestion that he come along as their kosher chef.

“Not 24 hours later I get an e-mail forwarded back from Dubai,” he said. “I almost deleted it because I get all this junk mail from Nigeria or Saudi Arabia.”

For the three-day trip, Weinblut was shuttled around in a chauffeured Bentley and stayed in the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. He even catered a meal on the 123rd floor for Dubai’s ruler, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

“It was an adventure for me,” he said. “It was just the experience of a lifetime.”

Calendar Girl

When Carl Kemp started thinking of baby names for his now 4-month-old daughter, he remembered something from famed trial lawyer Gerry Spence’s book, “How to Argue and Win Every Time.”

“He said human beings are creatures of story,” said Kemp, 39, whose Long Beach lobbying firm Kemp Group represents clients including the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and real estate firm Legacy Partners. “I wanted my daughter to have a good story for a name – something to live up to.”

Mission accomplished. When their daughter was born in June, Kemp and girlfriend Claudia Gutierrez, an attorney in the Los Angeles office of Shepard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, named her Maya.

Kemp said it was a nod both to his daughter’s roots – Kemp is black, Gutierrez is Mexican American – and to the year of her birth.

“You get the Mexican heritage with the Mayans, and you get Maya Angelou,” he said. “Plus all the Mayan end-of-the-world stuff. You’re born in 2012, and it’s up to you to change the world.”

Staff reporters Richard Clough and James Rufus Koren contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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