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Kossar's Bialys

Kossar’s on Grand Street, one of the last remaining Jewish institutions in a Manhattan neighborhood with fewer and fewer Jews, has completed a half-million renovation effort that kept it closed for about six weeks. This Friday, expect to get your favorite Eastern European doughy treat in a spiffy, clean environment — and, as usual, don’t wait too long to smear it with butter and stuff it in your face, or it’ll go cold and dry and die on you.

Evan Giniger and David Zablocki, who bought the store in 2013 from long-time LES resident Juda Engelmayer, added a sandwich counter and grill while you were out there, aching for your bialy fix, which means now you can get your bialy with the topping of your choice, which is probably closing the gap between bialys and bagels.

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Gininger told the Wall Street Journal a while back, “Most people are going to buy a business to earn a living. We bought a business to almost restore a bit of history in New York City and then desire to expand that throughout the city, throughout the country and even throughout the world.”

In fact, a new Kossar’s is opening soon on the Upper West Side, “a line of partially baked and frozen bagels and bialys” is also in the works. Next expect a PR campaign, to “raise the bialy’s profile.”

Works for us. Florence Fabricant offered this preview in the NY Times: “The working bakery in the back is now enclosed in glass, and the storefront is no longer drab, newly decked out with subway tiles and white marble. And now you can order your bialy sliced and filled with cream cheese, peanut butter, humus and even whitefish salad, which was never offered before. Kossar’s is also making its own cream cheeses, labeled (and trademarked) as Schmears, in flavors like lox, vegetable, horseradish and everything bagel. The bialys have gone on a flavor trip, too, with sun-dried tomato, olive and apple-cinnamon. There are also pletzls (onion flatbreads), challahs and babkas. Sandwiches like the Yenta, with whitefish salad and pastrami salmon, are available for the first time.”

Kossar’s
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