By Claudie Benjamin
Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys, a new star on the block, now shines at 270 West 72nd Street. The brightly lit sparkling white walls and tiled floors provide a welcoming backdrop for an abundant array of bialys, bagels, spreads, black & whites, rugalach, chocolate packed babka, and more.
Kossar’s decor encourages any impulse you might have to be a tourist in your own Upper West Side. Bundle up on a chilly New York winter morning and take a bit of food-related cultural history. Savor Kosser’s evocative atmosphere. Vintage photos of the old Lower East Side hang on the walls while the bialy itself opens an avenue into the Jewish immigrant cultural heritage of the city. Bialys Kuchen (rolls) were the specialty of bakers in Bialystok, Poland. The recipe and technique for making bialys came to Manhattan along with thousands of Jews fleeing pogroms and other forms of Russian persecution. In NYC, they lived side by side with Germans, Irish, Italians, and people from other backgrounds, escaping adversity in the late 1800s through the 1930s and 40s.
The Jewish immigrants often sold food from pushcarts or from barrels on the street. Some, like Kossar’s, opened shops. The original 1936 Kossar’s, renovated over time by several different owners, is still thriving at 367 Grand Street. Stores have been added on the Upper East Side, in Chelsea, and most recently on the Upper West Side. Kossar’s has also partnered with Goldbelly to have deliveries made throughout the U.S.
Exploring the multi-faceted impact of different immigrant communities through the lens of food and food preparation is the expertise of Brooklyn-based writer Jane Ziegelman. She grew up on West 74th St. and West End Avenue, went to Fieldston in Riverdale for High School, and worked summers at the Royale Kosher bakery, within sight of the present Kossar’s UWS location. She is the author of 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families and co-author with her husband Andrew Coe of A Square Meal, A Culinary History of the Great Depression. Ziegelman became familiar with a range of traditional Jewish breads (challah, seeded rye, corn rye and pumpernickel) while working at Royale. Today, her impression is that bagels and bialys were historically not sold in the same shops as cakes and other baked goods. What’s more, “they are entirely different things,” Most importantly in Ziegelman‘s opinion, “bialys and bagels come from two different traditions. Bialys are related to Pletzels, a flat onion bread (a breadmaking concept that has nothing in common with a bagel).”
The difference also lies in shape, taste, and preparation. Round and saucer-sized, a bialy has been described to combine the texture and taste of bagel and an English muffin. It is baked, whereas a bagel is boiled and then baked. Less sweet and lacking the shine of a bagel, a bialy does not have a hole in the center but rather a depression that traditionally is filled with chopped onions and poppy seeds. They are best served hot from the oven. How to eat a bialy is a much-discussed question, particularly since it is hard to slice in half. There are advocates for both smearing butter or cream cheese on the top and alternatively on a bialy’s underside.
Ziegelman grew up eating her mother’s excellent traditional but non-kosher cooking. However, her grandmother who lived in Queens, was the “master Jewish cook” of the family. On the topic of bread, H & H (on 80th Street and Broadway) was her family’s favorite. When asked as a food historian why bagels are so popular throughout the United States, and bialys are far less known outside of NYC, she responded that bialys are a highly specialized product of one region in Poland. Bagels, on the other hand, were made much more widely and likely known to far more people even before they came and settled in various parts of the United States. Once here, customers enjoyed the versatility among other pluses of bagels, they could be made into sandwiches, and they had a longer shelf life compared with bialys.
The increase of enthusiasm for bialys over the past 25 years beyond the Lower East Side is largely attributable to Mimi Sheraton, former food critic of the New York Times who died at the age of 97 in 2023, and her wonderfully interesting and moving The Bialy Eaters: a History of a Lost World (2000) was the result of exhaustive research.
Sheraton said that developing this book led her to speak with people whose memories of the simple, but distinctive bialy kuchen (rolls) evoked traumas of the past. “…most were Holocaust survivors. All were eager to share memories of the kuchen that was the literal and figurative staff of their lives, the icon that recalled home, family, and childhood friends and evoked an unrequited yearning for a lost world.” Amazon’s excerpt from Sheraton’s book poignantly illustrates this point:
When I was an adolescent in Auschwitz lying on the hard shelf that was my bed and hallucinating from hunger, I would often try to recall the shape and savory aroma of the kuchen we used to eat at home in Bialystok. By then I had lost all of my family and school-friends. Years later, when I was in New York, I would often watch those street-corner wagons that sell coffee and bread in the morning. I marveled at the whites, blacks, Asians, and Latinos as they munched on their bialys. I felt as though I was from another planet. To each of them, it was simply a tasty snack. How could they know they were partaking of something sacred–a bread that evoked bittersweet memories of a cultured and tragic corner of eastern Poland? A bread that, in my psyche, summons up even today the mystical dream world of Marc Chagall and Isaac Bashevis Singer. – Samuel Piscar
Some locals, potential regulars at Kossar’s on the Upper West Side, may be seen figuring out which spot they prefer to settle with a hot, freshly brewed La Colombe coffee and a delicious sweet or savory something to go with it. Not such an easy decision with bagels and bialys calling on the salty side and black and whites and babka beckoning sweetly.
If you live, work, or otherwise spend time on the Upper West Side, you may start the day early with a bialy – Kossar’s opens at 6:00 am.