All About Bagels
By BEATRICE and IRA HENRY FREEMAN | May 22, 1960
Bagels at Le Bagel Delight in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
RECENTLY A TIMES CORRESPONDENT IN Poland cabled the harrowing news that the militia was cracking down on bagel bootleggers in Ostrowiec Swietorkrzyski, an iron-mining town of 36,000. Nobody would pay the bagel taxes. The militia closed the underground bakeries.
It could never happen here. New York is the bagel center of the free world, where hundreds of thousands of people find that a bagel makes breakfast almost worth getting up for.
Philip Levine, counsel to the Bagel Bakers Council of Greater New York, says that some 250,000 are made every day, seven days a week, except on those Jewish holidays when leavened bread is banned from the table.
Mr. Levine thinks that, just as the pizza has found favor with non-Italians, so the bagel is winning friends among non-Jews here. “Last St. Patrick’s Day we turned out green-dyed bagels for Irish bagelniks and their sympathizers,” he said.
The peak bagel workload comes on Fridays and Saturdays, to provide an adequate supply of fresh bagels to be eaten with cream cheese and lox—smoked salmon—at Sunday brunch. In the New York area there are 30 bagel bakeries employing 450 men. The actual baking is done by 350 craftsmen of the Beigel (alternate spelling) Bakers Union, Local 338, American Bakery and Confectionary Workers.
Ben Greenspan, business agent for the union, says it takes three to six months to train a competent bagel baker. Bagel bakers are divided into two groups: bench men, who knead the dough and mold and boil the bagel; and oven men, who do the baking. The pay for the Teamsters who deliver them includes two dozen bagels per day per man.
The bagel bakers strictly enforce their rule that their product be made only by them, by hand, and never preserved in any way. The bagel bakers feel some responsibility to the public. During a strike last year, for example, they operated one bakery to produce just enough bagels to sustain human life.
Fix the Water? Let’s Talk About Bagels
By JAMES BARRON | July 21, 2006
THAT WONDERFUL WATER, ACCORDING TO some. That muddy water, according to others.
Water purity was up for discussion among bakers who labor in bagel shops and make focaccia in four-star restaurants like Daniel Boulud’s Daniel. Federal officials are concerned that city water now contains too much clay, stirred up in part by wild weather upstate, where the reservoirs are. The city has been dumping tons of sediment-scrubbing chemicals in the water, but that may not be enough. It may have to build a filtration plant.
That could cost billions of dollars, a financial headache, perhaps. But a culinary one? Maybe, maybe not.
“I have another store in New Jersey in a town that filters the water,” said Louis Thompson, who owns Terrace Bagels, on Prospect Park West in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. “My bagel comes out just as good in New Jersey as it does in New York.”
The wrong water can ruin things, he said. “You can’t use well water to make bagels,” he said. “You could, but they won’t come out right.
What, exactly is in that water, I don’t know. I’m not a chemist, I’m just a bagel maker.”
“I think New York water is still the secret ingredient,” said Debra Engelmayer, an owner. “I don’t think filtering makes the difference.”
Mr. Thompson, of Terrace Bagels, experimented before he opened his New Jersey shop and cafe. He hauled 150 gallons of filtered New Jersey water to Brooklyn and made a batch of bagels.
“The bagels came out just as good,” he said. “In towns in New Jersey you can’t find a decent bagel. I don’t know if that’s the water or the people that make them.”
East and West Side Bagel Bakeries Lay Claim to a Name
By BARBARA STEWART | December 15, 1998
EVER SINCE JERRY SEINFELD BEGAN USING A stage-set version of the H & H at Broadway and 80th Street on his sitcom, its reputation as a New York institution has reached across the country.
But there are actually two competing H & H bagel companies, each with its own recipe. One is H & H Bagels, with the store at Broadway and 80th Street and a factory and store at 12th Avenue and 46th Street. The other is H & H Bagels East, on Second Avenue near 80th Street.
Now, in a dispute that would have fit right into a “Seinfeld” episode, the West Side H & H is suing the East Side company, claiming exclusive rights to the H & H name.
H & H East is countersuing. It contends that it has every right to be known by the valuable initials, maybe even more right. “We are just as old,” said Richard Spehr, the lawyer for H & H East, “and have used the name as long as they have.”
In the early 70’s, when they were founded, they were one company, using one recipe. Mr. Toro, a baker from Puerto Rico, and Hector Hernandez, his sister’s husband, bought the shop on Broadway and renamed the enterprise after themselves: Helmer and Hector, H & H. They soon opened the East Side store.
But in 1985, the partnership faced bankruptcy. The two stores were split up and sold. Mr. Toro bought back the store on Broadway on his own. Mr. Hernandez became a livery-cab driver until his death in a hit-and-run accident in 1996.
During the last 10 years or so, the demand for bagels has boomed. So Mr. Toro decided to make a run at exclusive ownership of the H & H name.
It is, said Diane Alexiou, whose father bought the East Side store after the bankruptcy, “a very painful case for us.”
“We have the more upscale customer,” Ms. Alexiou said, “and it is a source of shame and embarrassment to them. We have marble floors. We sell Italian cookies and muffins and gourmet coffee. They’re just basically bagels.”
Lindy’s Long-Kept Secret?
By CRAIG CLAIBORNE | May 18, 1977
WHEN LINDY’S RESTAURANT IN MANHATTAN closed in 1969, it was the end of a legend in more ways than one. Most of all it was renowned for its cheesecakes, which were as integral a part of Gotham culture as Yankee Stadium, Coney Island or Grant’s Tomb.
Approximately 20 years ago, shortly before his death, I approached Leo Lindemann, the owner, and pleaded with him to let me have the recipe for his cheesecake. I was rewarded with a rather tolerant smile, as though I had demanded the Kohinoor diamond.
But I now have what is purported to be that recipe. It was offered by Guy Pascal, the distinguished pastry chef at La Côte Basque. How Mr. Pascal came into possession of it is a story of intrigue in and around the flour barrels of a kitchen in Las Vegas that began when he opened a small pastry shop there 10 years ago.
“One day,” Mr. Pascal said, “an old man came to ask for a job, and among his other credentials he told me that he had spent years in New York preparing the cheesecake at Lindy’s. At that time I’d never heard of Lindy’s cheesecake. Well, he started to make his dessert and my business started to boom: people were standing in line. I offered him money for the recipe. He refused and I offered him more. He still refused.
“For weeks I didn’t mention the cake. But I kept a strict account of the number of cakes he produced balanced against the amount of cream cheese we purchased. As the weeks passed I figured out the quantity of orange peel he used, how much lemon peel, the number of eggs and so on. And after six months I had it perfected.”
A Quest for the Best
By ED LEVINE | March 17, 2004
ON THE LAST DAY OF A MONTHLONG HUNT for the best cheesecake in New York, I took a cab to Rao’s, at the corner of 114th and Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem. Its cheesecake, I had heard, was ethereal, perfect stuff. Repeated calls to the restaurant’s owner, Frankie Pellegrino, had not been returned. Nor was a written request for an interview. There may have been a reason for this. Mr. Pellegrino’s nickname, known to many who have asked him for a table, is Frankie No.
I called his son, Frankie Pellegrino Jr., who owns Baldoria, on West 49th Street. (There’s cheesecake on his menu, too.) The younger Mr. Pellegrino chuckled when I asked him about his father’s cheesecake source. “I don’t even know her name myself,
” he said. “It is great cheesecake. I’ll call my dad and get back to you.” He did not.
I walked into Rao’s and took a seat at the bar in front of Nicky the Vest, so known for the 142 vests he owns and wears to pour drinks. “I don’t have a reservation,” I said. “But could I have a piece of cheesecake here at the bar?”
Nicky the Vest shook his head, doing his best Frankie No.
“We don’t have any cheesecake,” he said. “The lady that makes it broke her arm bad. I don’t know if she’s ever going to be able to make it again, but you could try back in a couple of months.”
That’s something to live for. In the meantime, here’s my list of the city’s best: Eileen’s Special Cheesecake, 17 Cleveland Place at Kenmare Street in SoHo; Helen’s Fabulous Cheesecake, 126 Union Street, between Columbia and Hicks Streets; Mona Lisa Pastry Shoppe, 1476 86th Street, at 15th Avenue, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; Monteleone’s, 355 Court Street at President Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; Monte’s Venetian Room, 451 Carroll Street, between Nevins Street and Third Avenue in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; Two Little Red Hens, 1652 Second Avenue, between 85th and 86th Streets; Yura & Company at 1659 Third Avenue at 93rd Street.
A Restaurant Legend Undergoes A Little Retelling
By JAMES BARRON | May 9, 2006
IT IS, AT MOST, A FOOTNOTE TO WHAT THE world remembers about Junior’s, one of New York’s storied restaurants, a footnote to its famous recipe for one of the things that people think of when they think of New York. Jeffrey Horowitz acknowledges all that.
But when he heard a radio report recently that Junior’s, the Brooklyn palace of cheesecake as well as corned beef, was building a 180-seat restaurant near Times Square, he decided it was time to tell a story that has been forgotten, except, it seems, by his family.
It is a story of three families—his and two others—and the restaurant business after World War II. That much seems certain. According to him, it is also the story of a $100-a-year licensing agreement, a corporate bankruptcy and the recipe for Junior’s quintessential cheesecake.
The family that has run Junior’s since it opened in 1950 flatly denies Mr. Horowitz’s account of how the cheesecake originated, and disputes other parts of his story. But after so long, there is really no way to prove or disprove Mr. Horowitz’s version of who did what to the cheesecake.
Mr. Horowitz, 60, maintains that he is one of the two people for whom Junior’s restaurant was named. He also says that Brooklyn’s most famous cheesecake originated not in Brooklyn but in Miami Beach, at another Juniors (though missing an apostrophe), opened by his father. And he says that it was his father, working with the baker at the Miami Beach Juniors, who came up with the cheesecake recipe, a denser, slightly less sweet variation on a staple of old-time New York restaurants like Lindy’s.
That is not the way the Rosens, who run Junior’s of Brooklyn, tell things. “None of this operation came from there,” Walter Rosen said. The Rosens say Harry Rosen worked with a baker at Junior’s, Eigel Peterson, to get the ingredients just right.
In Mr. Horowitz’s telling, the Rosens met his father through a lawyer he remembered as Louis Shapiro, who knew both families. “Shapiro says to my father, ‘I have a client, a restaurateur on Flatbush Avenue, going bust. Let him license the name Juniors and copy everything for $100 a year.’” The 20-year deal “wasn’t just for the name, it was the look, the menus,” Mr. Horowitz said.
In 1990, the Rosens registered the name Junior’s as a trademark. That was shortly before Arthur Horowitz, by then in his late 70’s, started selling takeout food under the name Juniors in Florida. Jeffrey Horowitz says Junior’s of Brooklyn demanded a $10,000 payment in exchange for using the name.
Jeffrey Horowitz has a sheaf of letters from lawyers about that dispute. Walter Rosen said, “Doesn’t mean a thing to me—and the 90’s, I’d remember.”
A Man, a Plan, a Hot Dog
By WILLIAM GRIMES | January 25, 1998
The 15-bite hot dog at Brooklyn Diner USA, on West 57th Street, is $13.50 with onion rings and sauerkraut.
IT’S ONE OF LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES THAT IN New York, a gastronomic paradise, the classic of classics is the lowly hot dog, served from a street cart. Nestled in a bun, topped with mustard, onions and sauerkraut, the $1.50 dog exudes the city’s essence as no other food can.
There is no doubt where [the hot dog] rose to fame: the boardwalk on Coney Island.
Like many stars, the hot dog has mysterious origins. No one agrees who invented it or who named it. But there is no doubt where it rose to fame: the boardwalk on Coney Island. There, in the late 1860’s or early 70’s, a German immigrant named Charles Feltman added a heating unit to his meat-pie wagon and began selling hot sausages wrapped in a roll as he worked his way up and down the beach.
Feltman parlayed his profits into a restaurant on West 10th Street that extended from Surf Avenue to the beach, where seven grills cooked thousands of hot dogs that were sold for 10 cents apiece. One grill worker, Nathan Handwerker, stared long and hard at the sausage on a roll and saw his future. In 1916, he began selling his own hot dogs from a building on Surf Avenue. He charged a nickel, the newly constructed subway line brought a stream of customers, and a New York legend, Nathan’s Famous Frankfurters, was born.
In 1939, Coney Island honored its most famous symbol by organizing National Hot Dog Day. “It is difficult to measure the contribution the hot dog has made to the fame and popularity of this great resort,” one official said. “Why, Coney Island is even shaped like a frankfurter!” Catching the spirit of the occasion, Milton Berle stepped onto the podium and announced, “Let our slogan be ‘E Pluribus Hot Dog.’”
It’s All in How the Dog Is Served
By ED LEVINE | May 25, 2005
YOU KNOW THOSE HOT DOGS THAT YOU KNOW and love, and can’t wait to eat this time of year? The ones served at Katz’s Delicatessen, Gray’s Papaya, Papaya King, the legendary Dominick’s truck in Queens and the best “dirty water dog” carts?
They’re all the same dog, manufactured by Marathon Enterprises, of East Rutherford, N.J., the parent company of Sabrett. They may vary in size, preparation and condiment selection (and Papaya King has Marathon add a secret spice to its mixture), but they’re the same ol’ dog. In fact, until a few years ago, Marathon made Nathan’s hot dogs.
So, you might think you would have to work to find a truly special hot dog, one that stands out because of the frank itself, its trimmings, the bun or the surroundings. New York has hot dogs that approach the $20 barrier. The Old Homestead serves an 11-ounce footlong made from American-raised Kobe beef for $19. I found it mushy and bland, and not redeemed by the white truffle mustard, the Kobe beef chili, the Vidalia onions, the Dutch bell peppers and the Cheshire Cheddar sauce that accompanied it. For the same price you can have a Gray’s Papaya special of two stupendous hot dogs and a papaya drink ($2.45) for a week and still have change in your pocket.
If you insist on a haute dog, share the 15-bite hot dog ($13.50) at the Brooklyn Diner USA. It is an excellent, snappy all-beef hot dog from a secret source (not Marathon, I’m told), weighs almost a pound, and comes with excellent onion rings and sauerkraut studded with juniper berries.
Expanding a Kingdom of Franks and Fruit Juice
By GLENN COLLINS | August 29, 1999
IT WAS 1:30 P.M. ON 125TH STREET IN Harlem, only 20 minutes after the stealth opening of the newest Papaya King hot-dog emporium. The debut was unheralded by necessity, because it had taken three days just to get Consolidated Edison to connect the gas to the frankfurter grills.
Even so, a line of 17 eager frankophiles snaked out the door. Jermel Vanderhorst, 27, a manager of the Blockbuster Video store next door, was eager to order. “I’ve been waiting for this place to open since July,” he said.
The store where Mr. Vanderhorst could finally get his two chili cheese dogs and a grape juice is the prototype of a planned new global Papaya King empire.
“Papaya King has a great bra
nd,” said Daniel Horan, chief executive of PK Operations Inc., an entrepreneurial subsidiary of the Manhattan venture capital firm Founders Equity that plans to hazard millions of dollars over the next few years to populate New York, and then the world, with Papaya Kings.
Mr. Horan and his investors hope that the very Noo Yawk pairing of hot dogs with papaya and other tropical fruit drinks is as nationally marketable as other mysteriously successful culinary relationships, like pastrami and rye or peanut butter and jelly. And Papaya King has “a national reputation,” according to Mr. Horan, 32, who holds an M.B.A. from Yale and worked as a manager at Gourmet Garage, the high-end Manhattan grocer.
Through the years, “we’ve been approached by countless people who wanted to take us national,” said Peter Poulos, the chief executive of the original Papaya King store.
Mr. Poulos, 61, who joined the family business in 1958, received an undisclosed fee from Founders Equity for the rights to use the Papaya King name and has been given a 12 percent stake in PK Operations. As part of the deal he and several experienced workers and managers came over from the 86th Street operation to help get the new store going.
The 1,200-square-foot prototype, which cost more than $300,000 to build, showcases its stand-up fare with green and orange neon and a galaxy of homely signs that, as in the original store, extol the store’s “Tastier Than Filet Mignon Frankfurters” for which “NO ONE, and we mean NO ONE, has our formula!”
Let There Be Pickles
The New York Times Book of New York Page 52