With the delicious irony that only Middle Europeans are capable of, waiters at the long departed Eclair Bakery/Restaurant on New York’s West 72nd Street, referred to each other as “Herr Doktor.” Eclair’s heyday was the late 30’s through to the 60s. Its customers were the Europeans, primarily Jewish, who had fled Hitler and wound up, for the most part, in the Washington Heights and Upper West Side neighborhoods of New York. Yes, many of the waiters had been Doctors in Europe, or lawyers, or architects, etc.. In New York they were waiters. They did not bewail their fate. They were alive.
Eclair catered to displaced novelists, musicians, singers, actors, artists and a host of intellectuals of every cerebral and artistic variety. And, the little, bald guy in the corner was Isaac Bashevis Singer (long before he became famous), eating his inevitable (he was a vegetarian) tuna fish sandwich. The women in the Eclair were bosomy, voluble, perfumed and flirtatious. It was a sexy place, echoing Viennese, Budapest and Bucharest coffee houses. The pastries were outstanding. Coffee came adorned with three inches of schlag (whipped cream). It was more than a bakery. Eclair was also a restaurant with outstanding wiener schnitzel, chicken paprikash and other artery clogging specialties of Mittel Europa. A multitude of languages was spoken at Eclair—German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Yiddish, Rumanian. To HG’s young ears it was all music. Eclair was owned by A.M. Selinger, Italian-born, Czech-reared. When he died in 1998 his New York Times obituary summed him up perfectly: “However long they lingered, the Eclair customers found a ready welcome from the proprietor, a small, natty man of legendary conviviality. a wide circle of friends and a vast array of pluperfect pastries.”
Whenever HG thinks of him, HG smiles
This was my favorite place. I spent a lot of time trying to reconstruct from memory their superb Opera Torte. I recall that there were something like 35 kinds of torten in the case, but I can’t remember what they were. Besides the grand Opera, there were Dobosh, Sacher, Cassis, those I tried, but I never made it to the others. Do you remember them? They also had delicious bread. I dearly wish the Selinger family would publish a cookbook of their recipes.
Ah, those calorie-rich, delightful pastries of yesteryear. Glad that we experienced them.
The other cakes I remember were the Black Forest cherry cake, mocca loaf (my favorite), lemon cake with slices of crystallized lemon on top (a close second), Napoleons, and of course the eclairs. But I remember a lot more than that, as I grew up having dinner at Eclair many a Sunday evening. I particularly remember their sauerbraten, red cabbage, and potato pancakes. My father (a Czech Jewish refugee) stopped there every day after work for a cup of coffee and to schmooze with other Central European immigrants, and always brought a fresh rye loaf home with him for our dinner. When I went with him as a child to buy cakes for hostess gifts or various special occasions, the very nice woman behind the counter – who had a concentration camp number tattooed on her forearm – always let me choose a petit four for myself. Sometimes the owners were there and they gave me Pez dispensers – the original ones, not the cheap plastic ones available now! And I also remember the raspberry syrup they sold, which we ate on top of rice pudding as a compromise to my English mother.
Ah, Jill, you awaken happy memories. O, where oh where is the schlag of yesteryear?
I loved their rum cake!
[…] Encyclopedic array of fresh roasted nuts, dried fruits and candy treats from across the globe. Eclair Bakery and Restaurant (72nd Street): Vienna, Berlin, Budapest and Warsaw transplanted in New York. Senate Cafeteria (96th […]
My wife and I gave a party on Jan. 2, 1971 to celebrate our marriage; it went on till morning (the party, I mean–the marriage is still going) and the stragglers, including us, went to the Eclair for breakfast. I’m sorry to learn that it’s gone. I. B. Singer lived nearby in the Ansonia, at 74th and Broadway, though I don’t know if I ever saw him there. And it’s now a Krispy Kreme? What an indignity.
Singer lived in the Belnord (86th and Broadway). However, many literary figures (maxim Gorky among them) lived at the Ansonia. Eclair to Krispy Kreme: The decline of western civiiization summed up by two sweets.
[…] by European immigrants who brought their pastry skills to the New World. On the West Side was the Eclair Bakery and Cafe on W. 72nd Street and a great bakery (name forgotten) on the southeast corner of Broadway and 79th […]
BABKA was the name of the great bakery on the southeast corner of 79th and Broadway. Its name was proclaimed in neon lights on a shingle that hung way out over the sidewalk–a beacon welcoming you to the upper west side when you got to the top of the subway steps.
Now, here’s my question: Was the neon Babka electric blue or shocking pink? I’m asking because I really need for someone to jog my memory in prep for a novel I am writing about the upper west side in the 1970s.
BTW, I have wonderful memories of Eclair–eating pastry, drinking tea, listening to the wit and wisdom of Norman the Waiter, and having my palm read by a psychic named Min.
I think the sign was electric blue. Can’t swear to it. Please let me know when the novel is published. Sure it will be fabulous.
the sign is in the offices of the organization known as landmark west!, you can find their site online easily and maybe they can help you.
My grandfather worked there from 1941 till 1970.
I hope he served me coffee—with much schlag, of course.
In the 40s and early 50s my bachelor uncle took me there when I visited from Philadelphia and it reflects all the smells of my German Jewish childhood. He also took me to a restaurant nearby which was located on the second floor of a building on Broadway. There he would order Herz, Leber, Lung which at the time I found hard to take but gradually began to enjoy. Wonder if anyone eats it today!
The dish you ate was called “lungen stew” and was served in Lower East Side Jewish soul food restaurants. Very chewy. Much garlic. Have not seen it for decades. It is a disregarded innards like hearts and gizzards. Gone. I liked it but I do not think it would attract much of a following in these effete days.
The Eclair was a favorite gathering spot of my parents and their crowd of self-named “Refu-Jews” as was of La Coupole, and the Viennese Lantern on the east side.
BTW, about Isaac Bashevis Singer eating a tuna sandwich because he was a vegetarian, is tuna considered a vegetable?
You have a point. Should describe Singer as eliminating meat from his diet. When asked if this was for his health, he said, no, it was for the health of the animals.
Hi worked for Mr. Selinger in 1978. I was a chef de rang at Laurent Restaurant from 3-11 PM, then I took the subway to Bedford-Stuyvesant and filled eclairs and cream puffs from midnight to 6 AM. I wrote an article for the NYT about American bakeries that was not too complimentary about Eclair, but it never got published. That article got me a 7-year position as columnist for the Washington Post food section, however. I liked Mr Selinger and his restaurant-bakery on 72nd St. I believe the LungenSuppe is also called Beuschl.
I loved reading the article about Eclair Bakery and restaurant I grew up eating? the famous Eclair pink rum cake. What even happened to the pastry recepies and especially the pink rum cake one
Where, oh, where, are the baker’s recipes???
The only tortes I can remember, besides the grand Opera Torte, were the Sacher Torte and Dobosh Torte, and a Crème-de-Cassis Torte, but there were many others in the case I never got ’round to trying. I cannot get another bakery to recreate the opera torte. I remember it as a seven-layer cake, with instead of one filling, praline cream, mocha cream, and chocolate cream followed by a layer of crispy brown dacquoise spread with apricot, followed by another sequence of layers, all covered with dark chocolate ganache, oh and I just remembered the triangles of chocolate angled on the top, just like a dobosh torte with its caramel triangles!
As for other memorable bakeries, the cinnamon rolls from Grossingers, which had dough made of sweet bread dough layered with Pressburger pastry dough!
Your pastry memories of Eclair gave HG a delightful sugar/chocolate rush.
the only way my mother could get my father to drive into the city from L.I. was a visit to the Eclair Bakery. Does anyone have a source for the rum cake recipe covered in pink fondant, his favorite, not mine but I’d like to make one for my sister who also loved it.
Had scores of wonder pastries at Eclair. Not the rum cake. The pink fondant looked nasty.
When I was a child, I would go to the Éclair on 1st avenue when I stayed over at my aunt’s apartment. In the morning, we would take her dogs with us and head off to Éclair. The dogs always received cookies from the ladies behind the counter. I always wanted the petit fours that were diamond shaped with white icing and yellow cake and jam inside. After that store closed I would go to the one on 72nd street. I wish there was a bakery that had the traditional cakes that bring back so many happy memories. I also got the French lollipops.
I am attempting to have a local bakery, Nook, reconstruct, literally, Eclair’s Opera Torte. This is how I remember it’s construction:
A.M. SELINGER’S OPERA TORTE
from his ECLAIR BAKERY on West 72nd Street
as remembered by Saul Davis
Topped with dark chocolate ganache, with wedges/triangles of dark chocolate angled on top, supported by rosettes of frosting, ala dobosh torte.
Six or seven layers of genoise, that may have contained chopped hazelnuts or almonds
Buttercream filling, possibly flavored with kirsch, divided into three, one praline vanilla (with finely chopped nuts), one mocha and one chocolate
Two layers of crisp, thin dacquoise with finely chopped almonds or hazelnuts
Apricot glaze
Construction:
Read from bottom to top
Served with whipped cream
Dark Chocolate triangles/wedges
Dark Chocolate ganache
Seventh layer genoise?
Apricot under dacquoise
Chocolate buttercream
Sixth layer genoise
Mocha buttercream
Fifth layer genoise
Praline buttercream
Fourth layer genoise
Dacquoise glazed with apricot upside-down so apricot touchs the chocolate buttercream
Chocolate buttercream
Third layer genoise
Mocha buttercream
Second layer genoise
Praline buttercream
Bottom layer: genoise
Saul: That’s a dessert I will serve my cardiologist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8NimVk8VIg
Found the recipe for you.
I remember Eclair fondly and grew up on their cakes. The mocha cake (different from the mocha and chocolate loaf), the hazelnut cake with the chocolate cobweb, opera, praline (half chocolate), lemon cake, birthday cake, princess cake (radial chocolate bars), dobush, 7 layer cake, buche de Noel… I really miss this place.
Please, our entire family fantasizes about the Prinzessin Torte, and I’ve made numerous stabs at it over the years… There was an amazing Peach Melba with vertical layers of cake. Does anyone out there have a recipe?? This would be a gift to all humankind.
Written for another site but was rejected cause the previous post was too old to reply to. So repurposing it here: About Eclair
Pink rum cake at Eclair’s
Laurie | Feb 28, 200605:29 PM 6
Does anybody remember Eclair’s amazing rum cake in the 1980’s with a pink top and chocolate sprinkles around the sides? Sometimes they’d put a maraschino cherry on top. Eclair’s used to sell it at Macy’s and sometimes you’d see smaller knock-offs, individually sized rectangular rum cakes with pink tops, in Little Italy.
Does anybody still make this cake in NYC? Has anybody seen a recipe? From what I remember, is was a small round cake with raspberry jam (?) between the layers. The top was smooth and pastel pink (fondant) and there were always chocolate sprinkles around the sides. It was smooth and neat, the perfect cake. I had it for every birthday as a kid until Eclair’s shut its doors. Thanks for any leads to find it again!
Oh my favorite! My father, who worked in the city, used to bring it home (to New Rochelle). It, and the amazing Sacher tort (his favorite). The Rum cake was my favorite, and yes, it was always perfect. It was made from a variety of left over dough that they apparently soaked all night in rum before making the cake. So good. So when you cut it open each piece was marbled in different colors and with lumps of different kinds of dough-yet all stayed together cohesively. Regardless of which variety of doughs was included, It pretty much always tasted the same-delicious. I guess the soaking it in rum thing unified the taste of the dough. Sometimes you’d find pieces of recognizable dough inside like maybe a bit of concentrated chocolate-meant to end up as Sacher or some such maybe. We’re not talking about anything like baba-au-rhum. It was not cloyingly sweet or sponge-like (I can attest to it being almost the opposite of sponge but I can’t attest to it not being cloyingly sweet-I was still pretty young when it disappeared-the icing was probably that tho-but the interior was decidedly rum-tasting). It was heavy. But not like Eastern European sweets that can weigh you down and that probably sunk the Titanic. Not that doughy buttery taste (which I actually hate-can’t eat butter cookies-best for target practice). But yum about Eclair’s rum cake. I can picture it now. As you said, it had a flat baked ink icing that had a raised ridge around it -maybe as an oval around the word Eclair. It came in two sizes-A) small and B) still too small. And they had individual small ones on white doilies. And yes, other places mimicked it. But none replicated it. And after a while they all disappeared. As I recall, chances my father brought it home improved when Eclair opened in Grand Central Station although we were already very familiar with the Eclair before that. Yum-sad no longer around! Don’t have the recipe. Thanks for the memory!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Bg8bEYPy0
Maybe Punschgrapferl is what you are looking for
Ooops sorry about the comments that Eastern European pastry tends to be…heavy. Most people love it.
In the late 70s I lived in Boston and decided I wanted to study with a violin teacher who lived on West 73rd Street. Once a week, I took the bus round-trip from Boston to New York for my violin lessons. My teacher was very good, but who was I kidding – I was really going for the box of cookies from Eclair on 72nd Street that I picked up after my lessons and enjoyed on the bus back home to Boston.
One day, I arrived at my teacher’s apartment for my lesson and there was a note on the front door “Heifetz sitting in on lessons today.” Heart pounding, I entered the apartment – it was April 1st. That scare called for two boxes of cookies for the trip home.
I thought Eclair would be there forever, and I still miss it. Is there anything even close to what Eclair was in NYC now?
Eclair was unique for its time. It was a haven for anti-Nazi refugees who had fled Hitler. Food, atmosphere, ambience. There’s nothing like it in present day NYC.
As I expected, but sad. I miss the refugees and older NY, all amazing. And then the original PR guy for NYC had to be banished.
Who was “the original PR guy for NYC”? I am puzzled and curious..
I am thinking of Woody Allen. He brought Manhattan to kids like me with his movies. Also, a different culture. I can remember in the aftermath of 9/11, a Muslim woman, perhaps from the Chicago area, commenting that she thought Muslims in the US had looked inward and perhaps needed to raise more awareness/understanding of their culture with Americans. No small task, but for me, I learned something about Manhattan culture from Woody Allen’s films. No need to post this, I know the topic is fraught.
Katherine: Am delighted to post anything you want to write about.
Oh my darlings. You need to take a trip to Vienna and do the coffeehaus circuit. Book a flight on Google flights several months in advance and stay in youth hostels( not just for youths). It is doable!