Brick Lane Beigel Bake, Spitalfields

Brick Lane Beigel Bake
159 Brick Lane
Spitalfields
E1
020 7729 0616

by Henrietta Crumpet

So I wanted a bit of breakfast and decided to take the boy for a beigel. The East End’s a trek, but it’s worth hauling ass to get there. You’ve got to commit to the beigel. The boy’s a goy but I don’t hold it against him, as long as he keeps his taste for bacon away from ma. He’s never been visited by a moyel, if you know what I mean, and I’m just coming to terms with the small nose.

So it’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m thinking a nice stroll down Brick Lane, maybe buy some material (it’s a bargain there - a snip - more than the boy’s had), and get some nosh. The Beigel Bake’s an institution, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even on Shabbat for the gentiles. We walk in. There’s a queue but a bit of jostling never did anyone any harm - that’s what elbows are for - and I’m eavesdropping on the local gossip, when in walks this total schnoorer and starts giving me this shpiel about his bad knee and his terrible eyes. Wants to jump in front of me. What a meshugener! I mean, these beigels are good, just like aunt Fiegi used to make, boiled first, baked after, and with enough cream cheese to feed all the doctors at a Bar Mitzvah. I’m not giving up my place for anyone.

I wanted the whole schmeer: salmon, strudel, cholah, cheese cake. I’m telling you, that melt-in-the-mouth salt beef: to die for. I’m no schmoe, I know a good cholah when I see one, and I won’t pay too much gelt for it either: 15p for a plain beigel, a bargain. This place is the business, go anywhere else, you’re a schmuck. As they say; ‘Love tastes sweet, but only with bread’, and after we’d schlepped home with beigels for the whole family, I didn’t hear the boy k’vetshing about putting that to the test…