Breads Bakery offers the Concord Cake, a specialty of Soutine
The idea is so simple it’s genius. How come nobody thought of it before? In fact, there oughta be a law: When you open a bakery, you must have at least one goodie that pays homage to a treasured bakery of the past.
Gadi Peleg did just that. When he opened an Upper West Side branch of Breads Bakery, his Union Square operation known for warm-from-the oven chocolate babka, the menu included an even richer chocolate treat—the Concord Cake. It was a specialty of Soutine, a bakery that held court at 104 W. 70th St. for many years until 2012.
“Some of my earliest memories of New York were of that bakery,” said the 40-year-old Mr. Peleg, who moved from Israel when he was a boy. “This is the cake my mother bought for every single one of my birthdays.”
The Concord Cake—I tried it for the first time at Breads Bakery, even though I was a regular at Soutine—consists of chocolate mousse topped with shards of chocolate meringue.
ENLARGE“They’re called shmoogies,” said Madge Rosenberg of the crunchy pieces. The owner of Soutine had joined Mr. Peleg and me at his new location, at Broadway and 63rd Street.
I’m not sure I’d call the confection a cake. I didn’t detect anything resembling flour, though it was delicious, nonetheless.
But that’s not what matters. What matters is the concept of bringing back from the dead the greatest hits of beloved bygone bakeries.
Why stop at Soutine?
Remember Bonte, on Third Avenue in the 70s? Its jewel-like petit fours struck a remarkable balance between cake, buttercream and fondant. In vanilla, chocolate and mocha, if memory serves me right.
Their fruit tarts—the delicate pastries cradled cherries, apples and a host of other natural wonders—were simultaneously an exercise in French excess and restraint.
And what about Rigo, a Hungarian pastry shop whose signature treats included an evocative-looking marzipan cone topped with a cherry and then covered in vanilla cream.
What occurred to me as I sat with Mr. Peleg and Ms. Rosenberg reminiscing about other neighborhood bakeries of old is that while new ones may move in, the cakes and pastries that turned customers into regulars are never coming back.
At least not until now.
The hankering can hit you morning, noon or night—“Hey, what I’d like right now is a (fill in the blank)”—and then you remember the bakery is long gone and a wistful feeling overcomes you.
ENLARGEIt’s not dissimilar to the death of a friend or family member. You think of them in the present tense, suddenly realize they’ve perished and struggle to paper over the hole in your heart.
That’s the inspiration, the good news, behind Mr. Peleg’s decision to bring back Soutine’s Concord Cake. It’s like resurrecting a 10,000-year-old mastodon from frozen DNA, only more delicious.
“I felt this was something of a homecoming,” he said, “and I really wanted to wink at other people who had an emotional connection to the neighborhood.”
Mr. Peleg managed to track down Ms. Rosenberg, who still lives in the neighborhood.
“I was thrilled,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “I was honored anybody would think enough of the cake to get in touch with me.”
ENLARGEIt took several attempts to get the cake right. “The first time they made it with our mousse,” Mr. Peleg recalled. “But it didn’t taste like my childhood.”
Ms. Rosenberg refused to accept any compensation for her recipe. Instead, Breads Bakery is donating a portion of the proceeds from the Concord Cake to the West Side YMCA, where she is a board member.
And as soon as Ms. Rosenberg sat down in Breads Bakery, she was recognized by adoring former customers.
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“I used to go to Soutine all the time,” Sophia De Boer told her. “My favorite cake was the ‘Triomphe,’ ” Soutine’s take on the Opera Cake. “Every family occasion was celebrated with a Triomphe.”
Ms. Rosenberg was flattered but not flattered enough, she said, to return to the business. “It was such hard work.”
—ralph.gardner@wsj.com