40 | JULY 29 • 2021 

clientele that includes 
some customers who sit 
down every week for a 
hot meal. Most popular 
on the menu are the West 
Bloomfield onion soup, 
whitefish meuniere and 
beef stroganoff, though a 
regularly rotating menu 
keeps things new. Yet for repeat cus-
tomers, Fleysher has their favorite meals 
already simmering before they even 
take a seat.
“You know who they are, what time 
they’re coming and what they’re going 
to eat beforehand,
” he says of some 
Bistro Le Bliss customers. “For every 
single person who walks in, you develop 
a relationship with them.
”

PATH TO FREEDOM
After more than 25 years in the United 
States, Fleysher is looking forward to 
the next chapter for Bistro Le Bliss. 
Yet like many other Soviet Jews who 
escaped the former Soviet Union due to 
antisemitism and limited opportunities, 
Fleysher carries a special appreciation 
for Jewish culture.
It’s one of the building blocks of 
Bistro Le Bliss, which caters to a large 
Jewish clientele and features Jewish-

inspired classics, though often with 
Fleysher’s custom twist. Growing up in 
Latvia, Fleysher was surrounded by a 
small, but close Jewish community that 
often stuck together. 
As the Soviet Union neared winter 
of 1991, which finally saw the collapse 
of the Iron Curtain, Fleysher’s friends 
began to move away. One by one, Jewish 
families immigrated to countries like 
Canada, Israel, Australia and the United 
States. Eventually, the Fleysher family 
was one of the last Jewish families left in 

Ogre. They, too, decided to leave Latvia 
for a better life abroad.
“We were the last of our family to 
immigrate,
” recalls Fleysher, who had 
two uncles immigrate to the United 

continued from page 39

NOSH

Chef at one of his tables 
with some dishes. 

Chef prepares the
vegetables for a dish.

Roasted beet and herring carpaccio: 
arugula, pickled purple shallots, fromage 
de chever, pickled mustard seeds. 

“FOR EVERY SINGLE 
PERSON WHO WALKS 
IN, YOU DEVELOP
A RELATIONSHIP 

WITH THEM”

— CHEF YAKOV FLEYSHER

JERRY ZOLYNSKY

JERRY ZOLYNSKY
JERRY ZOLYNSKY
JERRY ZOLYNSKY

