Forgotten New York

EBINGER REMNANT, Sunset Park

ForgottenFan Richard Schilling passes along this reveal at 5th Avenue and 60th Street, a prime spot for after-churchers looking for some dessert after Mass at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, a massive church on a hill visible from ferries in Upper New York Bay.

Ebinger’s Bakery is spoken of in hushed, reverential tones by Brooklynites of a certain age, and since I am of a certain age, I remember its green boxes with diagonal black lines, its V-shaped counter on its 86th Street, Bay Bridge branch, and its small cakes coated on all sides by rich icing…as well as its butter cookies, drizzled with frosting that was every conceivable color in the rainbow. Of course, I always ate the ones with the most icing first. These days, you see most nostalgic references about its blackout cake or babkas, which I apparently never sampled. Ebinger’s, amazingly, went bankrupt in 1972, but was revived in a much inferior product in the mid-1980s. Its role has been supplanted…almost…in the delis and groceries by Entenmann’s.

3/8/15

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