Bay Area Rosh Hashanah Food 2026: Prices, Preorders, Kosher Options & Where to Buy
- Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins at sundown on Friday 11 September 2026 and runs through Sunday 13 September. Because it starts on a Friday it runs straight into Shabbat, so you are cooking or reheating for three days, not one.
- The earliest deadline is Wise Sons: orders must be placed online by 10am on 9 September. Saul’s works the other way round, with pickup windows from Thursday 10 September to Sunday 13 September.
- Of the four places checked, only Grand Bakery in Oakland is kosher-certified — everything it bakes is certified kosher pareve under the Vaad of Northern California. Wise Sons, Saul’s and Noe Valley Bakery make no kosher claim at all.
- Wise Sons is materially cheaper per head on mains. Its brisket is $76 and serves 6; Saul’s is $42 and serves 2-3.
- Wise Sons’ $105 Rosh Hashanah Dinner for four is not a saving. Its five components cost exactly $105 bought separately.
- Noe Valley Bakery has published its Rosh Hashanah prices — $7.95 for a spiral challah, $17 for honey cake — but nothing in that range could actually be ordered when this was checked.
Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins at sundown on Friday 11 September, and the first Bay Area deadline lands well before that: Wise Sons wants High Holiday orders in by 10am on Tuesday 9 September.
The Friday start matters more than it looks. The holiday runs straight into Shabbat and on through Sunday 13 September, so this is a three-day stretch of meals rather than one dinner — and for anyone observing, Saturday pickup is not an option even where it is offered.
When is Rosh Hashanah 2026?
Sundown on Friday 11 September through nightfall on Sunday 13 September. The Hebrew year that begins is 5787.
Yom Kippur follows on Sunday 20 September into Monday 21 September, which matters if you are ordering from a place that runs one deadline for both — Wise Sons does, with a second cutoff at 10am on 18 September.
What does Rosh Hashanah food cost in the Bay Area?
Here is what the two big Jewish delis are charging this year, taken from their own 2026 menus.
| Dish | Wise Sons | Saul’s |
|---|---|---|
| Challah | $14 round raisin | $9.25 plain, $9.95 raisin |
| Brisket | $76, serves 6 | $42, serves 2–3 |
| Roast chicken | $31, serves 3–4 | $37, serves 2–3 |
| Honey cake | $16, serves 8 | $26.95, serves 3–5 |
| Chopped chicken liver | $12, 8 fl oz | $7.25, serves 2–3 |
Read the serving sizes rather than the prices and the two look very different. Wise Sons’ brisket works out around $12.67 a head at six servings; Saul’s is $42 for two to three, so $14 to $21. The same gap runs through the mains — Wise Sons is built for a table, Saul’s for a couple or a small family, and neither is obviously “cheaper” until you know how many people you are feeding.
Saul’s has the wider menu for a sit-down: whole rockfish matbucha at $38.95, Moroccan braised lamb at $42, a pumpkin and chickpea stew with chirsi couscous at $28.95, and vegetable succotash at $21, all stated as serving two to three. It is also the only one of the four selling gefilte fish — $11.95 a serving, and the menu makes a point of saying no jars were involved — alongside matzo balls at $12.95 for four and a quart of chicken bone broth at $15.95. Its bakery adds apple cake at $29.95 and babka, chocolate or apricot-pecan, at $26.95. Wise Sons leans to the sides and platters — sweet noodle kugel at $28 for eight, carrot tzimmes and autumn rice salad at $22 each for six, matzo ball soup at $19 for two, potato latkes at $24 for a half dozen or $44 for a dozen.
When do the preorder deadlines fall?
They work in two different directions, and mixing them up is the easiest way to miss out.
- Wise Sons runs on a deadline. Orders must be placed online by 10am on 9 September for Rosh Hashanah. Its page also states a general rule of 9am two days before pickup — the same day, an hour earlier — so treat 9am on the 9th as the safe number.
- Saul’s runs on pickup windows instead. Preorder pickups must be scheduled inside these: Thursday 10 September 4–6pm, Friday 11 September 9am–6pm, Saturday 12 September 9am–6pm, Sunday 13 September 9am–6pm.
Note what that Saturday window means in practice. It is offered, but it falls on the first day of the holiday and on Shabbat, so for observant customers the real choice is Thursday or Friday.
Which Bay Area options are actually kosher?
Only one of the four checked here, and this is worth being precise about, because a Jewish deli is not automatically a kosher one.
Grand Bakery in Oakland is certified kosher pareve. Its own site states that its facility and everything it bakes are supervised by the Vaad of Northern California. It makes challah, honey cake and hamantaschen, and it has been baking since 1959, when Ernie and Anne Hollander opened it as the New Yorker Bakery. It nearly closed on a retirement in 2017 before Sam Tobis took it over — the site is careful to say it kept the same bakers and the same challah.
Wise Sons, Saul’s and Noe Valley Bakery do not use the word kosher anywhere on their sites. That is not an accusation — it is simply what can and cannot be shown. If kashrut matters to your table, Grand Bakery is the one on this page that states it.
There is a catch with Grand Bakery, though: it does not do home delivery. Its delivery page says it supplies grocery stores, offices, schools and religious organisations, and that home delivery is something it hopes to add. Its products reach households through grocers including The Food Mill, Rocky’s Market, Piedmont Grocery, Mulberry’s Market, Farmer Joe’s and Mollie Stone’s.
Where do you pick it up?
Wise Sons runs four pickup points, which is the widest spread of anyone here, and it delivers across the Bay Area:
- Mission — 3150 24th Street, at Shotwell
- JCCSF — 3200 California Street, inside the Jewish Community Center
- Fillmore — 1520 Fillmore Street, at Geary
- Oakland — 3838 Telegraph Avenue, at W MacArthur
Saul’s is a single location, 1475 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, on 510-848-DELI. Noe Valley Bakery lists pickup and delivery for its holiday items between 11 September and 2 October.
Is the set dinner cheaper than ordering à la carte?
No. Wise Sons offers a Rosh Hashanah Dinner for four at $105, containing round raisin challah, tzimmes, autumn rice salad, roast chicken and honey cake.
Price those five separately from the same menu — $14, $22, $22, $31 and $16 — and the total is exactly $105. The bundle is a convenience, not a discount, and it is worth knowing before you assume the set is the thrifty option. Its real advantage is that it is one decision instead of five.
How much challah do you need?
Grand Bakery publishes the only serving guidance any of these places gives: one pound for every ten people when the challah is part of a meal, and one pound for every twenty when it is only for the blessing.
Its ceremonial loaves run from 3lb at $41.99 to 10lb at $139.99 — a flat $13.99 a pound at every size, in plain, sesame, poppy or raisin. Which also tells you something: the smallest one feeds thirty. For an ordinary table you want a normal round loaf, not a ceremonial one.
We built a challah size calculator that does this arithmetic and, for a small table, points you at the household loaves instead.
What should you know before ordering?
Three things that are easy to miss.
Wise Sons will not adapt dishes. Its page states plainly that it cannot accommodate half orders or modify ingredients for dietary restrictions. If someone at your table needs a change, order around it rather than asking.
Noe Valley Bakery has prices up but is not taking orders. Its Rosh Hashanah listings — spiral challah at $7.95, honey cake and apple streusel cake at $17, a cookie gift box at $25 — all render as unavailable. Worth watching rather than relying on. One oddity while you do: its raisin spiral challah is listed as available from 15 September, which is after the holiday, while the plain, sesame and poppyseed versions start on the 11th.
Order for three days, not one. Because the holiday begins Friday evening and runs through Sunday, the quantities that work for a single dinner will not cover it — and the shops that could top you up are closed or unusable for part of that stretch.
How we verified this
ws-highholidays-menu-2026.pdf.
🔴 The kosher question was checked rather than assumed, and the answer is narrower than the category suggests. A Jewish deli is not automatically a kosher one. Grand Bakery states its certification explicitly. The other three use the word nowhere on their sites, so this page says they make no claim — which is what can be shown — rather than asserting they are not certified.
🔴 One of my own readings was wrong and a machine check caught it. My first pass reported that Saul’s Moroccan braised lamb had no price. It has one — $42.00 — and my text extraction had silently dropped it because it de-duplicated repeated lines and $42.00 already appeared against the brisket. The same fault had hidden every “(serves 2-3)” note on the menu, which is exactly what the per-head comparison depends on.
⚠️ Wise Sons’ own page gives two different order deadlines. One line says orders must be placed by 10am on 9/9; another says 9am two days prior. Both point at 9 September; the times differ. This page quotes the earlier of the two, because the cost of being early is nothing.
⚠️ Noe Valley Bakery’s Rosh Hashanah collection also contains Passover and Purim items with pickup windows in March and February. Only the seven genuinely autumn items are used here.
⚠️ Frena Bakery is not listed even though it is a well-known kosher SF bakery. No working official site or current ordering channel could be verified, and several listings describe a closure. Not-verified is not the same as not-open, so it is left out rather than guessed at.