Elbow Bread Opens From Zoe Kanan and Court Street Grocers - Eater NY

Oct 30, 2024

New York’s bakery boom doesn’t seem to be slowing down: Somehow, we have yet to reach a city-wide croissant threshold. But many of the bakeries feel like copies of one another. Standard menu requirements include bulbous bomboloni, riffs on maritozzi that drift perhaps too far from the bun’s Roman roots, and those requisite croissants so precisely uniform one might wonder if they came from a 3D printer.

You won’t find any of those at the Jewish American bakery and sandwich shop Elbow Bread when it finally debuts tomorrow, October 30 at 1 Ludlow Street. A collaboration between baker Zoë Kanan and Court Street Grocers duo Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, Elbow Bread is located in the former Mel the Bakery space — at an intersection on the Lower East Side that could be described as an elbow instead of a corner.

Here, the pastry counter will be covered with onion bialys and knishes stuffed with potato, sauerkraut, and fresh dill. Gleaming loaves of challah will line the window. These baked goods have been part of the Lower East Side’s culinary fabric before — back when pushcarts hawking pickles still lined the streets and the neighborhood was the heart of American Jewish life around the turn of the 20th century. Like many Ashkenazi Jews in the U.S., Kanan believes all three owners have ancestors who came through the area.

While Ross and Finkelstein met when they were undergraduates at the Rhode Island School of Design, the first time Kanan reconnected with either of them was at the May 2023 open house for the space (which is about 300 square feet at street level with a larger subterranean kitchen). She had long been a fan of their Flatiron lunch counter S&P and talked with friends about reaching out about collaborating when they sent her an Instagram DM. “I basically manifested it,” she says.

Once they inked the deal, Kanan went on a deep dive into the history of the building, asking a friend’s sister who is a history teacher to help her. “Like so many buildings in New York, it has a rich history, and because I knew that it would likely connect in some way to what I ultimately wanted to make here, it felt like a good place to start,” Kanan explains.

They uncovered a rabbi, who was married and widowed several times, had lived upstairs. It also housed a Jewish publishing company at one time, and more recently Mel the Bakery, before it decamped to Hudson. “There’s so much to inherit through that, but also a lot to live up to,” she says.

Kanan has been testing out recipes here for months. “There was a long period of tryouts,” she adds and some creations like a chewy macaroon with mastic didn’t score a spot on the opening team, but might make appearances later. She has worked to balance tradition with techniques she has learned during her baking career under Melissa Weller at Sadelle’s, at Milk Bar, and running the pastry program at Gabe Stulman’s now-shuttered Simon & the Whale at the Freehand.

Her bialy dough is made with barley tea, an unconventional ingredient for sure, but the result is a bialy with a chew and onion-y flavor of the ones made in the area decades ago (which this writer grew up on). She is baking a schmaltz and scallion pocket inspired by the onion rolls at Ratner’s — a longtime staple of the neighborhood that shuttered 20 years ago. She has also revived the Charlotte Russe, a cake push-pop featured in Once Upon a Time in America.

There will be daily fresh loaves of challah with elegant curling tips made with a sourdough-starter that lends a tang. Kanan folds butter into that challah dough for two laminated pastries that are as close as the bakery gets to croissants: the savory sesame elbow, and her challah honey bun, with more layers than a can-can dancer’s crinoline, a strong contender for the city’s next viral pastry. Flaky yet rich, the buns are made from a single-strand braid lacquered with caramelized honey.

For drinks, expect a kasha latte made with Kettl’s buckwheat tea, coffee from Parlor, and Masha Tea’s holy basil herbal tea, overseen by beverage director Aidan Croft. As for the sandwich side of things, there will be a few grab-and-go options including a spinach kugel breakfast sandwich on challah Pullman, which draws inspiration from her grandmother’s kugel. And, in a throwback to Chock Full o’ Nuts, the team is serving a date-nut-bread sandwich, made here with crispy walnut butter, Medjool dates, and cream cheese. Meanwhile, made-to-order sandwiches and whole loaves of bread (including the challah) will roll out in the coming weeks.

Notably, Kanan will not be baking bagels at Elbow Bread since they require specific ventilation the space doesn’t have, but the team isn’t ruling out bagels in the future at another location. “If this thing works, then we’ll expand it,” Finkelstein says. Where? “Warsaw…” he says jokingly.

Elbow Bread will be open Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., or until sold out. Daily service will debut later in the season.

Devra Ferst is a freelance food and travel writer based in New York City who has contributed to the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Vogue, and numerous other publications. She is the co-author of The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories to Celebrate All Year Long. Follow her on Instagram @dferst.

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