By Claudie Benjamin
Madge Rosenberg spent 30 years devoted to her passion for baking. She was so successful that today, more than a decade after Soutine, her French-style bakery at 104 West 70th Street closed in 2012, she said she can’t go up to the farmers market on Columbus between 77th-81st Streets without meeting someone who comes up to her saying they remember the bakery. Not only that. “I was in Petra in Jordan, getting off a donkey when someone came up and said, ‘I remember you—Soutine.’”
Madge has lived in three different apartments in the same building in the West 60s over the past 58 years. She opened Soutine in 1973. Earlier, she had baked for Cafe des Artistes, and the owner encouraged her to take a baking basics course at New York Institute of Technology.
Beyond that, she had little formal training and learned mostly on the job. She recalled some trained employees were very generous in sharing their baking techniques and recipes. In thanks for acquiring some of her recipes, after Soutine closed, Breads Bakery made a large contribution in her name to the West Side YMCA. Madge has great affection and feelings of nostalgia for the Y. It’s where she swam and did other exercises 12 years ago to recover following a hip operation. It’s also the place, said the grandmother of many grandchildren, where her three children once went to nursery school.
Many locals still remember the tiny 642 sq. ft. bakery’s bright red-painted storefront and the transcendent croissants and baguettes sold at Soutine. They also have memories of celebratory cakes that marked birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and many other occasions. The chef, former New York Times food critic, and writer Ruth Reichl was a fan of the Soutine Bakery. Her husband ordered a cake for her 50th birthday party and in her thank you note she wrote to Madge, “the cake was so good I wish I had made it myself.” Madge got Ruth’s approval to use her quote as a tagline for the bakery.
Customer satisfaction and feeling part of the neighborhood were important to Madge and her husband Barry, a representative of small businesses on Community Board 7. Among his pleasures in the neighborhood was enjoying a morning coffee at Old John’s at its original location on Broadway before it moved around the block to West 67th Street, where the now-revamped luncheonette continues to thrive.
Madge said Barry was extremely supportive of her business and even came to work at the shop. She described him as a very engaging man and very popular with customers. She followed in Barry’s footsteps after he passed away, joining Community Board 7, a position she still holds.
The bakery was named for the French painter Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) because, Madge explained, “he painted bakers.” She knew about this, she said, because “My friend had a huge poster from a show in Paris in her kitchen in NYC.”
Though much of bakery life is predictable in terms of what and how many goods need to be prepared, there are certainly memorable exceptions. Quite a few relate to orders for cakes that would appear on television. “We made a lot of cakes for Saturday Night Live for when people threw pies and cakes at each other.” Another time, for the 275th anniversary of the U.S. Army, Soutine constructed a cake formed like a huge humvee tactical vehicle.
And, in yet another instance of the extraordinary, an immense cake was baked large and soft enough so that a character from the TV pilot that was being filmed “could fall from a balcony into the cake.”
An additional departure from the traditional was the creation of a cake for a couple, Americans who had met as teachers in Japan. The cake was topped with origami cranes fashioned with fondant.
Somehow, even with the ongoing activities of the bakery and mom responsibilities keeping her busy, Madge also found time to write. In the early 90s, she wrote “three books in three years” focused on bread-making machines. A quarter of a million copies were sold. Madge noted that these days in New York, there’s less interest in bread-making machines since “people who want to bake bread want to get their hands into it.” Does she still bake bread? Madge laughed, “I have a whole wheat loaf in the oven right now.”
Jane Kenefick, a retired ESL professor at Columbia, and her husband still live in the building next door to the space once occupied by Soutine. Jane said she met Madge in 1983 and was a regular customer. “My husband is French, so he needs a baguette every day.” Jane and Madge became friends and still walk together once a week. Jane said she was impressed with how supportive Madge’s husband was of young people and others in need. Both she and Madge described how Barry encouraged one homeless man to work at the bakery. Madge recalled, “He turned out to be a computer whiz, applied his knowledge to assist with spreadsheets and set up other IT operations. And, he was a wonderful cake decorator.’