when you want, where you want.
Eli Zabar Does Not Scoop His Ice Cream
Photo-Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
In the Manhattan food world, few names hold more weight than Eli Zabar. At 81, the Upper East Side magnate is “always grazing” through his dozen or so shops, cafés, bakeries, and restaurants — all of which continue to reflect his taste for the finer things. Last week, as he started tracking his eating in a tiny black notebook that he keeps in his shirt pocket, two receipts slipped out. One from when he flew his Grumman Tiger up to Nantucket on opening day of scallop season. Another for a half-dozen bottles of Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc from Sotheby’s. “That seemed to kick us off on a good note,” he says.
Tuesday, December 3
Every morning, I have coffee with my wife, Devon, before walking the dogs around 6. I prepared the coffee the night before, so all I have to do now is press the button on the Moccamaster.
Cup still in hand, I grab my telephone and leash my dogs. When I come back in, I send Pippa upstairs — she’s already had her treats. Gio, on the other hand, hasn’t had anything, so he sits there expectantly. I take his muzzle off — he tries to bite everybody — and give him one, then another, and another, then probably another for being so good.
When it’s time to head over to my stores, I park either on my block or on Madison Avenue. People always ask, How do you get parking spaces? Well, if you leave before 9 o’clock, you can park anywhere. The closer you get to Madison or Fifth, there’s no struggle for parking spaces like there is on the West Side, where folks sit in their cars all day waiting to move when the sweeper comes.
I start at my Essentials store on 91st Street. It’s full of children and lots of parents. It’s right down the block from Spence and Sacred Heart and across the street from Dalton. I park there for a moment and make the biggest eating decision of the day: Is it an apple day or is it a frittata day? Every day, the team at Essentials makes a big frittata with seasonal vegetables and Parmesan cheese. But sometimes I decide to go celibate and just have an apple and another coffee.
Today, it turns out, is a celibate day. Devon and I have a breakfast meeting at E.A.T. with our city councilmember, Julie Menin. (Only coffee for all of us.) She’s running for president of the City Council, so this is a chance to air our grievances, namely congestion pricing. I personally think the money is going to be stolen by the MTA and none of it will be used effectively. They should try to fix mass transit before they start limiting cars.
I’m still at E.A.T. when the roast chickens came out from the kitchen, with caramelized carrots roasted in the pan alongside the birds. I grab two with my hands. Possibly the most delicious treat ever.
I have an afternoon interview with Flynn McGarry for Interview magazine. We each have some more coffee. He’s a very interesting young man, went into the restaurant business at 14 or 16. He wants to know if we share the same frustrations, issues, and pleasures — we do! For instance: It is not possible to train someone in sensibility. They have to come to you fully loaded. Afterward, I sample some miraculously still-ripe Brazilian melons from our produce section, great big black cherries from Argentina, and heirloom tomatoes. Years ago, I built greenhouses on 91st Street to try to grow tomatoes, so tomato season runs from November through Christmas for me.
It’s also prime gift-basket season, which means Devon comes home exhausted; we decide to do dinner at home. I stop at Bar 91 and pick up sausages and lentils. We eat it alongside Devon’s famous garlicky green salad. You can pick up the leaves and eat them with your fingers. Or at least that’s the way I do it.
Wednesday, December 4
Same coffee routine, same apple-versus-frittata conflict. This time, the frittata wins. I still take an apple as backup.
I go in early to meet the mechanics fixing equipment. By 7, I’m back home to deliver coffee to Devon, then I’m off to my pastry shop. We’re having problems with rancid nuts, especially walnuts and hazelnuts. A few rancid nuts ruin whole batches of cakes and fillings, so I make a point of tasting them often. We’ve got big plastic bins; this morning, I dig deep with a spoon and take a good whiff.
Back at E.A.T., a batch of raisin-nut rolls arrive, and Fouad, the longtime manager, is so pleased with them that he insists I try one. Delicious. I worked on perfecting the rosemary ciabatta, so I also had to try one of those four-inch squares to be sure it held up well.
Tonight, we’re going to have a party at E.A.T. to celebrate our 50th anniversary. The clothing store agnès b. has been across the street for 40 years, so it is co-hosting. One of the hors d’oeuvres we’re serving is a one-bite biscuit with ham and honey mustard. In the past, the biscuits have been overbaked, and I was concerned they wouldn’t be delicious. So, in the early afternoon, I meet with our pastry chef, Gabriel, and punch out the dough in a few sizes. We watch it bake for ten minutes. I nosh on three or four of the runts.
The event starts at 6, and I eat tons of little sandwiches along with some damn good Pierre Peters Champagne. The single best hors d’oeuvre in the world is my chopped liver on thinly sliced raisin-nut bread cut into triangles. Of course, we also serve smoked salmon on seven-grain bread. The party is half people in their late 20s and early 30s, half longtime regulars in their 80s and 90s.
As we say at Passover, it should have been enough. But my son Oliver convinces me to have a proper dinner, so we go to Eli’s Table. We have a bowl of pasta with white truffles and Nantucket scallops. Absolutely the best combination. I don’t want to sound too egotistical, but I think I kind of invented it.
Thursday, December 5
It’s an apple day — but that only gets me to 11 o’clock. Then I need to do some more noshing.
At 91, I resist the siren call of the spare ribs, caramelized and shiny, and instead go for the shepherd’s pie. It’s a combination of all sorts of ground meat that we have left over from different things — brisket, hamburgers. Then they pipe mashed potatoes on top. I spoon a couple of tablespoons into a paper cup. It is absolutely terrific. Chef Rodrigo deserves a moment of praise.
In the early afternoon, Devon calls me with a gift-basket emergency. A basket has to ship to Miami Beach, and she needs six plain bagels and six everything bagels. So I go to H&H on Second Avenue. (We were out of bagels at the store.) I hate it when you buy 12 bagels and they give you two for free. I have no choice but to eat one of them, nothing on it, on the way to deliver the dozen to Devon.
I swing by my son Sasha’s ice-cream store, Glace. The line is around the corner, and I have to fight for an opening. I usually only eat vanilla ice cream, but I love all his flavors; today, I opt for New York Cheesecake Crumb.
Back at Eli’s Market, we’re working on a salmon niçoise sandwich. We switched to a brioche hamburger roll, but I can’t get it to stand up on its own. We’ll keep at it.
It’s the 90th anniversary of my father opening Zabar’s on Broadway. My nieces Annie and Marguerite had the idea to light up some skyscrapers in Zabar’s iconic orange to celebrate my brothers Stanley and Saul. My friend Douglas Durst generously offered to light up all his tallest buildings, and tonight lots of family gather on the 102nd floor of a building in Hudson Yards to watch. There are some small bowls of food around, pieces of beef on polenta and another I don’t remember. Annie brings a half- kilo of Italian caviar.
Getting down from the 102nd floor is a nightmare. Hudson Yards feels like a sci-fi movie to me, and I’m alone in the elevator. The doors close and a screen depicts some kind of topsy-turvy version of what you’d see outside. I’m dizzy and terrified and there aren’t any handrails!
Back home, I decompress with a glass of Burgundy. I eat another Devon-classic salad with leftover grilled chicken. Dessert is, of course, Eli’s vanilla ice cream. No need to scoop it. Just a spoon in the pint. Keep skimming across the top; you don’t want to compress the air or deflate it. Don’t dig in — ever.
Friday, December 6
Will the week ever end?
Apple and frittata morning.
We’ve got my favorite peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches next to the register at E.A.T. today. There is absolutely nothing like them. The brioche bread has to be soft like the tramezzini bread of Venice. Homemade dark-seeded raspberry jam (no pectin). Getting the ratio of peanut butter to jelly is the key. It’s my longtime manager Nunny’s specialty. They’re a messy affair, like eating a Georgia peach over the sink.
I stop at Eli’s Market to check on the progress of my salmon niçoise sandwich. We’re cutting the celery, peppers, potatoes, and haricots verts very small. That seems to help.
While in the kitchen, one of the staff drops a basket of chicken fingers directly into the fryer and scorches them to nothing but crunch in an instant. I eat a few. Not bad — interesting like Chinese fried-pork skin.
I check in on the setup at Bar 91 and see the cut-up hot Italian sausages and onions that I find irresistible. I sample a few before visiting the pastry commissary. Trays of granola are on racks, so I spoon a bit for quality control.
Friday night is dinner at home with the Elkuses. I greet them with glasses of Pierre Peters Reserve Oubliée Champagne, and we keep drinking that right through the whole meal. I’d almost forgotten the joys of dining at home. It’s embarrassing and inconvenient to say, but our oven doesn’t work. Seems they don’t make the computer board for this lovely Thermador from 2006 any longer.
Devon is determined to keep the meal simple, and it is superb: thinly sliced Jerusalem bread, toasted, with salted French butter; thinly sliced smoked salmon; and just a few drops of lemon juice. And, of course, ground black pepper.
This is followed by Devon’s scrambled eggs: about half-butter, half-eggs, slowly stirred together on more toasted, buttered loaf. I tower each plate with fluffy white truffles. On the side, Devon’s garlicky crunchy salad again, but this time with shaved Vaucluse black truffles.
One of my favorite Barolo winemakers, Melva, gifted Devon a jar of her homemade orange marmalade from her Seville orange trees. I carried the jar back from Italy in November. Tonight, Devon makes a crostata in an amoebalike shape and covers it with a thin smear of the marmalade, then bakes it until they are one. So, so delicious.
Saturday, December 7
The apple wins out.
Sasha needs more whipped cream at his shop, so I pick up a couple of gallons at my pastry shop. There’s already a line at Glace when I arrive at 11:30. (It opens at noon.) I try out a small hot chocolate and attempt to torch my own marshmallow fluff. Very lopsided. Sasha would not approve.
Devon calls and asks what I’m thinking for dinner. I say, “Beef Stroganoff?” She says, “Where did you come up with that?” Anyway, she’s game.
I come home, and she’s borrowed my coffee scale to measure the exact quantities of each ingredient … which I immediately (if not sooner) disregard. So, of course, I add too much hot paprika, and we have to use twice the amount of heavy cream Sam Sifton suggests in his recipe. Our eyes are tearing up and we cannot stop sneezing, but other than that it comes out great!
On Friday and Saturday nights, we have a jazz band at Bar 91. Before dessert, we go over and have a glass of wine, listening to the music. Then back home to polish off a pint of vanilla.
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