metro >> Out To Eat

Bistro 82 Opens

Best Veggie Restaurants

Barbecue In Plymouth

Newly renovated and French-inspired Bistro 82 opened
last month in downtown Royal Oak, at 4th Street and
South Lafayette in the former Sangria tapas bar and
salsa dance club. Upstairs is Sabrage, a high-end lounge
and night club where a DJ will play above a fish tank
while champagne is served from a tap behind an onyx
bar. It will be open on Friday and Saturday nights.
Derik Watson is the leader of Bistro 82's kitchen, which
will offer West and East Coast selections of oysters,
pork belly and ratatouille and several other appetizers,
Waygu hanger steak, beef short rib, sea scallops, Scottish
salmon, chicken paillard and other entrees, and dessert
choices such as yogurt panna cotta, dark chocolate tart
and cinnamon sugar beignets.

Popular food blog Eater Detroit came
out with its list of best dining spots for
vegetarians and vegans in the Motor City. On
the list is Seva, 66 E. Forest Ave.; Topsoil,
4454 Woodward Ave.; PJ's Lager House,
1254 Michigan Ave.; Corktown's Brooklyn
Street Local, 1266 Michigan Ave.; the
Russell Street Deli, 2465 Russell St.; and
Detroit Vegan Soul, 8029 Agnes St. The IN
would like to add one more restaurant to
that list: Gold 'N' Greens, 695 Williams Mall
on the Wayne State University campus. This
kosher restaurant is a favorite of vegans and
vegetarians alike.

Texas-based Dickey's Barbecue Pit
recently opened its fourth Michigan
location at 44741 Five Mile Road,
next to Busch's Supermarket, in
Plymouth Township. The restaurant
is fast casual where people "move
with the food:' similar to Subway
and Qdoba. Regular menu items
include pit-smoked meats, potato
salad and pecan pie. Specials include
free ice cream every day as well as
a kids-eat-free offer on Sundays.
Other Michigan locations: Commerce
Township, Troy and Coldwater.

New York = agel Man

0 •SMI

orn an

read" in Detroit.

Vivian Henoch I Special to the Jewish News

E

ver wonder where bagels come
from?
Pondering the mystery — and
history — of the Detroit New York Bagel,
it's lunchtime when we drop in to chat
with Howard Goldsmith, owner and pro-
prietor of New York Bagel Baking Co.
For Detroiters, the shop on Woodward
in Ferndale is an institution, serving
hands-down "the best bagels," accord-
ing to those who know the distinction
between a bagel and a roll with a hole.
"Born and 'bread' in Detroit," New York
Bagel is a third-generation family busi-
ness, a rarity in this day and age of fast
and frozen food.
"My grandfather, Morris, started
the business in 1921 with two Eastern
European immigrants who took
over another bagel shop Downtown,"
Goldsmith says. "They renamed the store
`New York Bagel' since bagels were intro-
duced into the U.S.
in New York City"
Morris eventually
became sole pro-
prietor and, shortly
after, Howard's
father, Harvey,
joined him.
As Jewish Detroit
moved over the
years, New York
New York Bagels
Bagel followed.
Howard recalls a store at Linwood and
Clairmount, but his first vivid memories
stem from the shop on Schaeffer and
Seven Mile, which opened in 1954.
"We just sold bagels there he
describes. "Right next door, there was a
grocery store — House of Foods — and

34

March 6 • 2014

people went there for their lox and cream
cheese"
In the 1960s, when bagel production
became automated, New York Bagel
opened its first suburban Detroit store in
Oak Park, followed by the Ferndale loca-
tion, then the store on Orchard Lake in
West Bloomfield.

Born To Bagels
A speech and language therapist by train-
ing, working as an assistant professor at
the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee,
Goldsmith returned to Detroit in 1987
with his wife, Carole, and young family to
take on the business in partnership with
his dad.
"My father had always left the door
open for me; we had a third child on the
way and I was thinking about our future.
I looked for other academic positions and
it all seemed the same, and I decided then
to make a career of this. My
dad and I initially shared
responsibility; now he's
retired. So this is my baby:'
Asked about the chance of
a fourth generation stepping
into the business, Goldsmith
is philosophical. "I wouldn't
rule anything out, but I
would be surprised"
With daughter, Andree,
29, working as an attorney in
Washington, D.C., and son Michael, 26, an
actor in New York City, Philip, 32, is the
one NEXTGener in the Goldsmith family
who lives in town. "I believe Phil will take
a different path in business:' Goldsmith
says. "And look, nothing lasts forever"
Fortunately for Detroit bagel lovers,

New York Bagel is still
going strong.

What Makes A Bagel
At New York Bagel
Flour. Water. Yeast. Malt.
And tradition. You probably don't think
much about it when you stop in for your
fresh dozen of plain, salted, poppy and
sesame. But, those New York Bagels that
we all know and love come piping hot out
of the oven like clockwork on produc-
tion days — 170 dozen to a batch, 25,000
dozen a week.
You don't think twice about the perfect
consistency of a New York Bagel — not
to mention the time honored-Jewish culi-
nary ritual of setting out a tray of bagels,
shmear and lox on a Sunday morning, but
someone has to keep the tradition alive in
Detroit and that someone is Goldsmith.
"You have to know what you're doing:'
Goldsmith says. "Here we make every-
thing from scratch. For us, there's more
of an art and a science to it. First of all,
there's the recipe:'
Not to be attempted at home, the
recipe for New York Bagels starts in the
Baking Company with 350 pounds of
flour and 160 pounds of water. Batches
are made in what looks like a cement
mixer; dough is fed in strips through a
conveyor to produce uniform rounds.
Bagels are then "proofed" — left to rise
— then boiled in an alkalized water bath
before baking.
"Our bagels have no preservatives at all,
so the shelf life isn't that long:' explains
Goldsmith. "There are so many chemicals
out there that you could add to the dough,
but we don't put that stuff in, so we have

Howard Goldsmith

to turn over our product:'
Apparently that's not a problem. With
the three stores and a sizeable wholesale
distribution, New York Bagel Co. sells
and delivers to cafes and markets city-
wide what most consider to be Detroit's
quintessential bagels. Noting the full
menu of New York Bagel provisions from
the Bake Shop, Goldsmith adds, "We
do 'flagels' (flat bagels) and bialys on
the weekends. On average, we whip up
about 700 pounds of cream cheese spread
every week; we buy our lox from Seafare
(another Detroit family business)"

What Makes A Bagel Jewish?
That, my friends, is anyone's guess.
Apparently, the basic roll-with-a-hole
concept is centuries old. Non-Jewish,
boiled-and-baked, ring-shaped breads
are found in Italy, Greece, Finland and
Poland, even countries in Asia and Africa.
Putting the requisite "shmear" and lox
aside, why the European version has pre-
vailed as the bagel of our heritage has as
much to do with Jewish identity as any-
thing else.
New York Bagel has a large and faith-
ful clientele of former Detroiters who buy
bagels to take back home wherever they
come in to visit. "I don't know if they can't
get a bagel like mine anywhere — or if
they just want a taste of home, but I'm
sure part of it is nostalgia:' Goldsmith
says.