Customer Reviews

The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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Mimi Sheraton was fascinated by French Toast in Paris, Turkish Delight in Istanbul, Danish pastry in Copenhagen, Scotch Salmon in Glasgow, and Parma Ham in Parma. So why not hunt for the elusive Bialy in Bialystok? I am a Kossar's Bialy (Grand Street at Essex in NYC) afficionado, so I approached this book with a chip on my shoulder. But Mimi knows her stuff. She even studied the art of bialy making at Kossar's (she includes a Kossar based recipe in the book). Mimi Sheraton (formerly with The New York Times) took off on an adventure to Bialystok (which was once the home of 50,000 Jews), packing some bialys (bailystoker kuchen) for the trip with her husband, Dick Falcone. Her COBD, or Compulsive Obsessive Bialy Disorder, originated after a 1992 sidetrip from her Conde Nast Traveler assignment on Polish foods. After placing an ad seeking stories in the Bialystok Shtimme Yiddish newspaper, she sorts through the stories, and then visits Israel, Australia, Argentina, Paris, Lincolnwood, Scottsdale (jalapeno flavored), and NYC's Lower East Side over seven years, and creates this history (herstory) of the bialy and the community that is now lost. By the way, did you know that Bell Bialy of Canarsie Brooklyn ships 96,000 bagels and bialies to Japan's Hokushin Corp. each month (where they sell for over $1.10 each)? Or that bialy's should never be sliced like a bagel? Or that Jews created a settlement in Bialystok officially in 1558 and were granted citizenship in 1745. This is a fun read. Now if someone would just tell me the difference between those who say kugel and those who say kiegel.

As a child when I asked my Grandfather where the family was from - he told me a town called Bialystock. When I asked him where it was he told me "well sometimes it was in Poland, othertimes it was in Russia." Before reading this book I knew there was some sort of connection between the Bialy and that town, and this book opened some doors for me.

Mimi Sheraton has opened a time machine, sparked by her curiosity about a humble breakfast treat. By starting out with a simple question about a roll, she goes on a quest and opens a the lost world of pre-Holocaust Poland in the process. Her book takes you to every corner of the world (Poland, France, Israel, Texas, Austalia and of course NYC) in search of a lost world. This is more than abook about bread, and perhaps one of the best history books I have recently - and a great exploration of what it means to be Jewish, and in a bigger sense explores what it means to be human.

While it's a short book (I read it in one night) Mimi packs in the details. When you are done reading it you wish you were taking notes. This book would make a great gift, and is worth sharing with your friends and family.

This is an annoying book. The author is interested in her topic, but only up to a point. If she has a freebie trip somewhere, she'll check out the bialy picture there. But if nobody will pay her way (as in the case of Australia), she won't. Surprisingly she is not embarrassed to admit this openly.

The research is by-the-numbers. She'll ask her standard questions and report the answers dutifully. ("I asked him, 'Did you eat halvah with your kuchen?' He said Yes.") This leads to a lot of repetition, as respondent after respondent says the same thing.

There's not a lot of creative thought here to organize the material--except her own story of how she got a letter from somebody and checked it out, which is far less interesting than the real subject matter (Bialystokers and their foodways) could have been.

A better book would have at least had a map of Bialystok with the bakeries and shops marked, so we could have a spatial context to put her random data into.

Luckily her informants have some interesting stories to tell--sometimes in spite of her bialy questionnaire. ("I left home that day and never saw my family again." "Did they eat halvah with their kuchen?")

If you don't expect insights, this is an o.k. short read. Like a long Sunday New York Times Magazine article.

Sheraton comes out with two statements that are on the surface contradictory: the best bialys (and the customs used to eat them) were from Bialystok, but the bialys she most enjoys are from the places she is most familiar (ie, Kossar's). For instance, even though every Bialystoker she encounters states that you absolutely do not split the roll open, she states that she still continues to do this because she finds it awkward not to. Fair enough. However, other variations of the bialy, such as the amount of onion used and the generosity of poppy seeds on top, she seems to feel are intolerable. And that's fine, too, because what she is really saying- and what just about everyone she interviews is saying- is that the bialy you love best is the bialy you grew up with. When all is said and done, it isn't about the specific recipe or food as much as it is about the past. The food you grew up with is one of the strongest links to your past. This is what Sheraton is really writing about; when the Bialystokers talk about how much they miss the bialy they grew up with and how inferior the modern versions are, what they are really mourning is the loss of the home they lived in. That the exact method of producing the bialy has been lost is just one more testament to the world that was destroyed in the Holocaust.

My mother went to visit my sister in New York recently, and I asked her to bring back some bialys. Surely the bialys in New York would be better than the bialys I eat here in Boston. Not even close. My bialy has definite merits over its New York counterpart (abundant onions and poppyseeds, huge and fat, not flat), but it wasn't simply that. My bialys are the ones I've grown accustomed to eating and remind me of the neighborhood I buy them in and the people I eat them with. I cannot imagine losing all of that, and every passage of this book that spoke about those losses brought tears to my eyes.

Read this book and fall in love with an old bread and a lost world.

"Forget the milk and honey. Just take me to your bialys," food writer Mimi Sheraton imagines herself saying when she arrives in Israel. Her assignment: to write about food and restaurants for a travel magazine. Her secret mission: to continue her research on the onion roll commonly known as the bialy. Israel is only one of many stops on Sheraton's journey to discover the truth about bialys -- the real recipe, the orginal way of eating it.

In page-turningly graceful prose, Sheraton tracks the social history of the bialy (kuchen in Yiddish). Sheraton's first stop is Bialystok, Poland, the birthplace of bialys. Her obsessive search for bakers and ingredients adds humor to the horror of a place infamous for being the only town in the world to have pogroms after the Holocaust. "I felt as though I had just been in a surreal dream, wandering in a strange gray city, cold and wet and clutching an onion roll that no one recognized," Sheraton says with mock-seriousness.

An underground network of bialy contacts leads Sheraton to Jewish communities around the world. She meets the famous lawyer Samuel Pisar, who dreamed of bialys from his shelf in Auschwitz. She also meets the man who invented bialys, and others who simply ate bialys -- "Rich Jews ate kuchen with meals, and for poor Jews kuchen were the meal." Each has a story to tell -- the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto, torture by the Russians, the struggles of settlers in Palestine -- all of it refracted through memories of freshly baked kuchen.

Through Sheraton's sleuthing we discover that cheese, butter, and especially halvah (sesame seed snacks) garnished the original bialy -- which was packed with poppy seeds and embossed with slivers of fresh, roasted onions. We also learn about the bizarre ritual sacrifice of unbaked dough at Kossar's bialy joint in New York. If that isn't enough, you also get the recipe.

Diane Mehta

I grew up on Grand Street near Kossar's bialy bakery, and Ms. Sheraton comes close to making me taste those delicious breads once again. Her language is descriptive about food in much the same way that a good novelist makes you see something common differently through deft imagery. Unless you are a major nitpicker, you'll enjoy this gentle, respectful, and fun book. And if you haven't tasted a genuine bialy, on your next trip to NYC please do take a sidetrip to Grand and Essex and pick up a bag--onion, not garlic, for reasons the author addresses--fresh and warm out of the oven. In a world of mass-produced blandness, I can see why Ms. Sheraton wrote this book, seeking the secret behind something unique.

Wonderful book on the Bialy. My mother was from Bialystok, Poland and this is where the Bialy originated. If you know what a Bialy is this book is a must read. You can purchase the Bialy in New York City.

A polish friend of mine is from this area and when I read him an article about Baily's and a reference about this book he was very interested so I ordered it. The whole story of Bailys could be a really interesting subject in that it ties in very much with WWII and I am voracious reader of WWII stories. The author is more interested in being a who's who of jewish names then in the actual stories that might accompany these people who were from the region. To go from thousands and thousands and now the Polish town has 6 sure makes you wonder about all the people who are from there that might have survived and their more intimate tales. She has a great chance to reach out with the common ties of family traditions and foods to go more into their lives yet it doesnt seem to be her ability to find their soul and their strengths. It is a fast easy read, great chance at a missing link in a lost heritage and period of time, but it really fell short. The book did however make me want to search more and find more details from this region and their people. I also think whenever I am in New York again one day I know some places to search for Bailys and try them for myself.

We purchased this book because my daughter is doing a history project about bialys. This is a well-written book on a unique subject--a resource I certainly did not expect to find when we started searching for information. I enjoyed Sheraton's journey in search of the history of the bialy, as well as the "perfect" bialy.

If you've ever eaten a bialy you'll appreciate the efforts of Mimi Sheraton. I envy her journey to all parts of the world in search of the origins of the bialy. She was quite successful and is able to share her findings in a most descriptive way. I was totally in sync with her, every step of the way. If you don't know what a bialy is, this book will entice you to find one to try...but heed her advise and seek the authentic bialy baker. My mouth is watering, just thinking about it.