In memory of Saul Zabar

On what is controversially called Columbus Day weekend, which this year fell uncontroversially at the end of Sukkot, my wife, daughter and I found ourselves in our native habitat: New York. Naturally, this meant a trip to Zabar’s, though because our daughter is a toddler who travels by stroller when she is not toddling, I decided to make this Saturday different from all other Saturdays: “to” Zabar’s meant this time “up to but, alas, not inside.” After all, weekends are always a madhouse in the country’s most famous “appetizing” store, founded in 1934, but especially so four days after patriarch Saul Zabar’s death on October 7 (of all days) at the age of 97. An awful lot of pilgrims journeyed last week to the mecca of this self-described “lox-smith.”

There are other great places in Manhattan to buy smoked fish. Indeed, there are two other venerable establishments in the very same zip code (10024): Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, founded in 1946, and Barney Greengrass, founded in 1908 and at its current location since 1929. But Zabar’s is an institution unto itself with its iconic orange lettering, extraordinary cheese selection, array of coffee varieties and general chaotic atmosphere of Upper West Siders and other meshuggeners seeking bagels, knishes, pastrami, chopped chicken liver, rugelach, strudels and babkas, as well as sable, whitefish, herring in cream sauce and so many other fishy appetizing staples. (By the way, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary spend too much time in Oxford, for there’s no other way to explain why the last illustrative instance of the adjective “appetizing” dates to 1865 and why the dictionary of record ignores the nuance of its use with a noun like “shop” or “store.”)

It was thanks to trips to Zabar’s with my father, when I was not much older than my daughter is now, that I understood that there are many kinds of smoked salmon and grasped the distinction – vital but neglected in ordinary American parlance, as well as by the OED – between nova and belly lox. (In case you ever wish to give me some, I prefer lox, but my wife goes for nova.) The last time I had a one-on-one conversation with Saul Zabar was perhaps half a century ago – my father having instructed his small son on how exactly to stand his ground in the madding crowd and order paper-thin slices of lox – though like pretty much every New Yorker I grew up with, I felt I knew him and his brother Stanley (now 93) pretty well.

Saul was a presence in the store for my whole life, and well before, and I and many others learned more about him in 2022 when Schocken Books came out with Zabar’s: A Family Story, with Recipes by his daughter Lori, with whom I had a passing acquaintance and who, very sadly, died a few months before publication. Of all the many brief pieces, past and present, on Zabar’s and the Zabar family, my favorite is one that James Panero published in these pages when the book appeared.

And then, on Saturday, October 11, just like that, Diane Keaton died. It’s not a special scene as such, but in the 1979 movie Manhattan, which is a love story to the borough, she appears with Woody Allen outside Zabar’s. I can’t stop thinking about it.

The Katzes recently moved to Washington, D.C. There’s nothing like Zabar’s there. Fortunately, appetizing food can still be yours – and frequently is ours – even if you do not live around 10024, provided you tolerate the cost of one-day shipping. I regret that my daughter will never get to meet Saul Zabar, and probably I should’ve braved the madness on Saturday and pushed her stroller into the store as a tribute. Still, the girl loves fish – and I suspect there’s a lot more lox in her future.