This afternoon, we heard the sad news that Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, which has been in business since 1920, making it the oldest bialy store in Brooklyn and possibly the whole city, is closing forever. Or...is it?
Proprietor Steven Ross told The Jew & The Carrot that the bialy shop was being forced to close because of money issues and the changing demographics of Coney Island. "I'm heartbroken," he said. "It's been four generations, including my son." But a call to the bakery this afternoon to confirm the report was met with a quizzical response from a staffer, who told us he had no idea what we were talking about. "Not that I'm aware of," he said, when asked if the store was closing.
The bakery claims to be the oldest bialy shop in the city, as does—bialy scandal!—Kossar's Bialys on the Lower East Side, though Mimi Sheraton's book The Bialy Eater: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World gives the title to Coney Island. In any event, Jewish bread authorities are already upset by the news: “It puts a lump in my throat,” said Cara de Silva, author of In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy of Women of Terezin, calling the shop "one of the sacred spaces of New York." We only hope that Coney Island's owners don't turn this loss into an epic, drawn-out saga, a la H&H—let the bialys go in peace, if they must go at all.
