December 11, 1978 |
Vintage Insatiable
Zabar's In Excelsis
Once, Zabar's was just a little neighborhood deli, known for the haunting tang of its lox and the perfume of the nobler pickle. What did Zabar's know then from the reblochon and prosciutto? Today, the house cures its own gravlax and poaches salmon to go with a mellow green sauce. There is delicious whitefish salad, sweet Scotch salmon…and imported housewares suspended from the ceiling -- tempting stalactites of colanders and whisks and copper bowls for ballooning egg whites, all at discount prices. In Provence, they fill crocks marked "Zabar's" with herbs. And there is a gathering of fine breads baked about the boroughs, bakalava, and rich Russian coffee cake.
And suddenly the meat department is a hotbed of creativity. Texas barbeque has come to Broadway. So much is happening in Zabar's cramped kitchen (where it turns out five tons of food a week), not even Harold Horowytz can keep up with it. Harold is the amiable and portly impresario of the charcuterie. A few months ago, Stanley Zabar brought home a hickory smoker and told Harold to play with it. The folks there have smoked almost everything but Harold: ribs, of course, and pork (southern-grown, peanut-fed), chicken, duck, brisket (the barbeque classic), shell steak, and spectacular prime ribs. They smoke turkey, too, and lamb. Rabbit is next. There is a smoke-perfumed barbeque sauce that is definitely an acquired taste.
Zabar's regulars take a number and queue to buy the moist apple-stuffed duckling and homey meat loaf, magnificently moist ribs of veal, sweet Virginia-style corned beef and juicy corned beef hot out of the oven, roasted under a mantle of peppers, onions, and tomato. There are 423 items tucked into a narrow nave 24 feet long-- hams, scented with honey or molasses, apple and hickory; mellow Black Forest bacon and nitrate-free bacon too; salamis for every taste (try the red-hot peppery calabrese from San Francisco); smoky all-beef beer sticks; and classy liverwurst from Wisconsin.
P.S. Whatever you do, don't miss Scrumpy's cider. It's the essence of apples times ten.
2245 Broadway, near 80th Street. 212 787 2000