Grownup Halloween Treats

When Saul Zabar passed away last week at the age of 97 it made the front page of the New York Times. The paper even published an article about the food at his memorial (there was much kvetching about the lack of whitefish).

As a New Yorker who’s lived on the upper west side of Manhattan for more than 30 years, this seems only fitting. Zabar’s is not so much a store as an important local institution; I’ve gotten to know my favorite neighbors while waiting in the lox line.

And every one of them has an opinion.

Including my son.

“You let the guy with the blue eyes slice your fish?” Nick asked the other day as he extracted salmon from the refrigerator. “What were you thinking?”

We both know that this man - this very nice man - slices the nova in thick slabs; we, on the other hand, are convinced it tastes far better in slices so fragile you can read the newspaper through it. But the line was long, I was in a hurry, and when the wrong guy called my number I meekly acquiesced.

The truth is that when my favorite slicer, David (he was everybody’s favorite), retired about ten years ago I was distraught. It took me a while to figure out which of the remaining slicers I could trust. None of them do a bad job, but they each have a personal style. One guy always hands a little taste across the counter, the man with the diamond in his ear is very funny, the Asian slicer is extremely reliable and the sweet man, the one who says he loves fish so much he goes home and eats it for dinner, starts slicing thick when the line gets long. And they’re all so idiosyncratic they even have their own special ways of wrapping the fish.

I love the ritual, but the salmon itself is not why I go to Zabar’s. It isn’t the bagels either. Or the bialys (I get mine at Kossar’s). My favorite Zabar’s food is their fantastic salmon roe.

Every time I spread a bit of sour cream onto a cracker (or a tiny boiled potato) and top it with a spoonful of the little orange orbs I experience a frisson of pleasure. The lovely roe sparkles like tiny jewels. Then you take a bite and it pops ...