Deborah Leipziger
We all know bagels, but how many of us know the bialy? For starters, spell check does not even know what a bialy is. I had never heard of a bialy until I worked in New York City in my 20s. So first let me introduce you to the bialy.
The cousin of the bagel, a bialy usually had sauteed onions at its center instead of a hole. Sometimes there are poppyseeds too. The bialy gets its name from Bialystock, Poland and has more of a sour dough taste. Perfect with butter, toasted.
The perfect bialy can be found at Kossar’s in Manhattan who have been making bialys since 1936. It turns out that “bialy” is actually a nickname for the bialystocker kuchen, or little bread from Bialystock. Jewish immigrants to New York ate bialys at every meal.
What a joy it is to try Kossar’s bialys with my daughter, Allie and her friend Ben, who live right nearby. This is how our food tour starts. It is Memorial Day, so NYC is quite empty of crowds, and we try our first toasted and buttered bialy at Kossar’s. It is a revelation which deserves its own ode.
We find a table and admire the black and white photos on the walls celebrating the Jewish immigrant community of the Lower East side. One of my favorite things about NYC is how you commune with strangers. The man sitting next to us gives a course on the history and geography of the bialy.
We then proceed to Allie’s favorite iced coffee, haunt, Oslo Coffee Roasters. Walking to the river with our iced brew. We watch the pigeons with their emerald and purple feathers glinting in the sun, observe the ships with their cargo. We listen to the conversations as the roller bladers speed past us and watch the folks reading.
Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my New Yorker daughter and Andy is the best. We gather in the Temple of Dendur, a massive Egyptian Temple with water. I love seeing the alabaster, walking through pyramids and observing the throngs of tourists.
My daughter guides me to the Asian gallery where we sit in the sun at the scholar’s garden and catch up. On our way out, we see the most remarkable site: a deer made out of glass circles, the artist calls pix-cells. I feel as though I have conjured up the patronus in Harry Potter.
