For
Eli Zabar, the 1970s were the Dark Ages for bread in New York City. In 1973, he opened
E.A.T., his gourmet deli and café on Madison Avenue, and he was desperate to find good bread for his smoked salmon sandwiches. "The old bakeries had died out," he says, "and the bakeries that survived were making mass-produced supermarket garbage. There were a few mom and pops around, but most of those weren't any good either." He was getting his bread from an Italian bakery up in Harlem whose owner was often drunk.
"One day, the bread came in, and it was so bad that I said, 'Even I can make bread better than this.'"
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I was passing E.A.T. yesterday, and the siren call of Eli Zabar's overpriced but usually delicious food got the best of me. I ordered four items, all sweets; a quarter-pound of the fruit coffee cake ($3), a mini chocolate cupcake...
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