Inspired by the “bakery renaissance” that’s currently underway across New York City — if you spot a line somewhere, there’s a very good chance there are baked goods at the end of it — T: The New York Times Style Magazine has assembled a list of “The 25 Essential Pastries to Eat in New York City.”

Among those on the list are several Jewish treats, including a buttery, chocolatey babka that’s made New Yorkers’ mouths water since 2013 and a tiny knish filled with sauerkraut and dill from a buzzy new bakery on the Lower East Side.

To assemble their of list 25 standout pastries — a tough task, we imagine — the magazine assembled a panel of renowned bakers: pastry chef and writer Tanya Bush; pastry chef Camari Mick; chef and Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi; Bánh by Lauren founder and pastry chef Lauren Tran; Shaun Velez, executive pastry chef at Daniel; and baker and cookbook author Melissa Weller.

Among the panel’s picks are some beloved old-school sweets like Lloyd’s Carrot Cake and the sour cream glazed doughnut from Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop; upscale creations like the Lysee mousse cake from Lysee and four Jewish-inspired desserts. Keep scrolling to see, in alphabetical order, which Jewish pastries are on the Times’ list.

1. Agi’s Counter’s cheesecake

Opened in 2021 by Brooklyn-based Jewish chef Jeremy Salamon, Agi’s Counter (818 Franklin Ave.) was inspired by Salamon’s grandmother, Agi, a Hungarian Jew and a Holocaust survivor.

“Most people, when they hear Hungarian, if they have any idea the first thing that comes to mind is probably paprika or goulash — maybe chicken paprikás,” Salamon, a James Beard Award-nominated chef, told the New York Jewish Week last summer. “The concept is so limited.”

The cheesecake at Agi’s Counter has been on offer since the restaurant opened — in fact, for a while, it was the only dessert on the menu. “A riff on the dense, creamy New York style often credited to Arnold Reuben, who made it a century ago at his Jewish diner, Reuben’s Restaurant in Midtown, and later popularized at diners like Junior’s, which first opened in 1950 in Downtown Brooklyn, Salamon’s version is a thick wedge made with Philadelphia cream cheese on a crushed graham cracker crust,” the magazine describes.

At Agi’s Counter, the “well-executed take on a classic” is served topped with extra virgin olive oil, Maldon salt and a lemon wedge during dinner service. As part of the weekend brunch menu, it is topped with a blueberry and coriander compote.

“It was like $18, and I was there for lunch, so the dessert was actually the most expensive part,” said Tran. “I thought, ‘Oh, bold.’ And then I was blown away.”

While you’re there, don’t miss Agi’s Counter’s tuna melt, which features “oily, slow-cooked tuna, alpine Cheddar, pickled peppers, celery, dill and Kewpie mayo. Last year, it was one of 11 Jewish sandwiches on the New York Times’ list of “57 Sandwiches That Define New York City.”

2. Breads’ chocolate babka

The chocolatey, buttery, braided babka at Breads Bakery has been delighting New Yorkers since 2013, when the Israeli-inspired spot first opened near Union Square.

Breads’ buttery, laminated dough — “crispy-edged, springy and oozing with a Nutella-and-chocolate filling” per the Times — reignited the popularity of this Ashkenazi dessert across the city (and eventually in Paris, too.)

Today, Breads has six locations around the city, and its babka has become a New York icon — the bakery reportedly sells over 1,000 babkas a day during the winter holidays, per the Times. Co-founder and owner Gadi Peleg refers to his baker as “the house that babka built.”

According to panelist Weller, Breads “started a trend of babka, and also the trend of laminated doughs being used in different ways.”

Added Tosi: “He really defied the odds of how much chocolate one could put in babka.”

3. Elbow Bread’s potato sauerkraut knish

The Lower East Side’s buzzy Elbow Bread (1 Ludlow St.) opened last October, where baker  Zoë Kanan has been busy creating old-school Jewish baked goods with a modern twist.

Backed by partners Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, the founders of the popular Flatiron Jewish luncheonette S&P, Kanan — who’s been called “a baker’s baker” by New York Magazine — turns out delicacies like bialys and rugelach, as well as contemporary hybrids like a challah honey bun, which is part croissant, part challah and “our sweetest ooey, gooey item,” Kanan told the New York Jewish Week.

“There aren’t many Jewish bakeries here anymore,” Kanan said. “I saw an opportunity to do something here [on the Lower East Side], in a location with so much Jewish history, and bringing my own personal style to it, which borrows from a lot of different techniques and ingredients. I love the classics and tradition is important, but what I find myself thinking about is ways to reinterpret.”

The pastry that made the T Magazine list is a savory one: a tiny sauerkraut knish, made of flaky laminated pastry wrapped around mashed Yukon Gold potatoes “flecked with crunchy salt and flavored with sauerkraut, onions, sour cream and fresh dill.”

“Knish was this thing that you just didn’t want,” panelist Weller said of the small pastry. “I love that she decided to reinvent it. Because it needed that.”

4. Fan-Fan Doughnuts’ guava and cheese fan-fan

After successfully launching the NYC mini-chain Dough Doughnuts and ice pop company La Newyorkina in 2010, Mexican-Jewish pastry chef Fany Gerson opened her Brooklyn doughnut shop Fan-Fan Doughnuts (448 Lafayette Ave.) in the fall of 2020. Despite launching during the pandemic, lines formed out the door.

In her work, as in her life, Gerson enjoys reflecting on the richness of her Jewish and Mexican heritages. “I feel like through time I’ve explored it through food and I’m kind of bridging the two worlds,” Gerson told the New York Jewish Week in 2021.

During Hanukkah, Gerson sells delicious and inventive sufganiyot, which are traditionally fried, round jelly-filled doughnuts that are enjoyed during the holiday. But the pastry that made the Times’ list can be enjoyed year-round: an éclair-inspired doughnut, known as a fan-fan, that’s filled with cream cheese, glazed with guava and topped by a brown butter walnut cookie crumble.

The treat is “inspired by the guava cheese roll from one of her favorite Mexico City bakeries,” according to the Times.

“That’s the thing about food, it’s not ephemeral,” Gerson told us. “How many memories are tied to food? A smell can take you back.”

—
The post These Jewish baked goods made the New York Times’ list of ‘25 Essential Pastries’ in NYC appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 13 days to the election.

Tonight’s debate

• The candidates will reunite for a second and final debate tonight, just days before early voting starts on Saturday.

• It’s the last chance for Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa to take the stage with Zohran Mamdani, who has held a double-digit polling lead for months.

• Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, called for the moderators to ask candidates about their approach to antisemitism. “It is vital all candidates get on the record and publicly lay out their strategy for how they will keep Jewish New Yorkers safe during this unprecedented time,” he said.

• His demand came as the ADL released a report this morning that found “hundreds of incidents of harassment, vandalism and physical violence targeting members of New York’s Jewish community” in 2025. The report did not include a number of incidents, but said they are growing in “both frequency and intensity.”

• The ADL told us they want the candidates to answer three questions: how they will ensure the safety of Jewish constituents; what message they give to Jewish New Yorkers who are anxious about rising antisemitism; and what response they give to Jews who “consider the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ to be a call for violence against Israelis/Jews worldwide.”

• The last question targets Mamdani, who declined to condemn the protest slogan during the primary, but has since said he would “discourage” the term and acknowledged that it incited fear in some Jewish New Yorkers. Greenblatt has attacked Mamdani for his stance on Israel and previously said the candidate would not condemn the phrase because “he believes it.”

• You can catch the debate live at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Spectrum News NY1 and WNYC radio. There will also be a livestream on YouTube. In the first debate last week, antisemitism and Israel figured prominently.

Following the money

• Neighborhoods with large Jewish communities funneled money into Cuomo’s campaign over the two days after incumbent Mayor Eric Adams quit the race, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign contributions.

• Cuomo’s largest concentration of donors came from a ZIP code covering Gravesend in Brooklyn, with more than 90 individual donors, followed by Midwood with more than 80 donors, the data showed.

• Gravesend and Midwood are both home to dense Jewish populations. Some may have rallied around Cuomo as he became the principal competitor to Mamdani, whose views on Israel alienated many older, Orthodox and more moderate or conservative Jews.

• Gravesend is the epicenter of a movement to get Syrian Jews to vote, which has included requirements for voter registration to enroll in yeshivas or attend synagogue.

• Many voters in the area supported President Donald Trump in 2024 and are Sephardic Jews with roots in Syria or originate from the former Soviet Union, which could influence their views of Mamdani as a democratic socialist.

• Cuomo also received contributions from nearly 200 people across three ZIP codes on the Upper East Side and 175 people in two Upper West Side ZIP codes.

Endorsement tracker

• Rep. Dan Goldman, a Jewish Democrat who represents swaths of Manhattan and Brooklyn, said on Tuesday that he was “not ready” to endorse Mamdani as Election Day approaches.

• Asked by CNN’s Kasie Hunt if he was going to vote for Mamdani, Goldman said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, to be honest.”

• Goldman elaborated, “I am very concerned about some of the rhetoric coming from Zohran Mamdani, and I can tell you as a Jew in New York, who was in Israel on Oct. 7, I and many other people are legitimately scared because there has been violence in the name of anti-Israel and anti-Zionism. And I’ve asked him to speak out on that and to condemn that and I frankly haven’t really seen him do much on that.”

• In August, Goldman said he had a “good conversation” with Mamdani but would not endorse the party nominee until he took “concrete steps” to assuage the fears of Jewish New Yorkers.

• Meanwhile, Rabbi Michael S. Miller, the longtime head of New York’s Jewish Community Relations Council, has backed Cuomo in his first political endorsement, joining multiple rabbis in departing from their past practices to weigh in.

• Miller cited Mamdani’s Israel views, saying the frontrunner “would put at risk the residents of the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.”

Cuomo says he would give Sliwa a job

• Cuomo suggested he would give Sliwa a job in his mayoral administration if the Republican nominee dropped out to help him beat Mamdani, when asked by the Jewish conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg yesterday.

• “That would be something that I would be interested in. We need a coalition to run this city. We need New Yorkers to come together,” Cuomo told Rosenberg.

• It’s the kind of scenario that attendees at a synagogue meeting on Sunday pitched to Sliwa in an effort to convince him to exit the race. Sliwa rebuffed them and remains defiant against mounting pressure from Cuomo and anti-Mamdani New Yorkers. “Let’s be very clear: I am not dropping out, under no circumstances,” he said at a press conference on the Upper West Side on Tuesday. “I’ve already been offered money to drop out. I said, ‘No.’”

Mamdani attacked over imam meeting

• Cuomo and Sliwa are attacking Mamdani over his recent photo of a meeting with Siraj Wahhaj, a well-known imam in Brooklyn.

• The New York Post covered Wahhaj’s opposition to homosexuality and his characterization as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though Wahhaj was never charged and the list he appeared on was criticized as overly broad.

• Political experts told Jewish Insider that the backlash to Mamdani’s meeting with Wahhaj is unlikely to influence the election amid a generational shift. “Dead cops and firefighters don’t seem to matter much these days,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who leads an anti-Mamdani super PAC.

• Mamdani has said the criticism is discriminatory. “The same imam met with Mayor Bloomberg, met with Mayor De Blasio, campaigned alongside Eric Adams, and the only time it became an issue of national attention was when I met with him because of the fact of my faith and because I’m on the precipice of winning this election,” he told reporters, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

—
The post ADL calls for antisemitism questions as NYC mayoral candidates debate for a 2nd and final time appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Israeli basketball teams, sports officials, and President Isaac Herzog applauded the announcement on Tuesday that EuroLeague and EuroCup basketball games will return to Israel starting Dec. 1, following a two-year hiatus in which Israeli teams played their “home” matches throughout Europe due to the war with Hamas in Gaza.

“This is the right move. It is an important move,” Herzog said. “I call on all sports organizations around the world, in all sports: it is time to strengthen the shared spirit of sport, and the message that sport connects people, rather than divides them. Sport serves as a bridge of hope, fairness, and fraternity. Let’s play!!”

Herzog sent a letter to EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejūnas earlier this week, officially requesting the immediate return of EuroLeague games in Israel, the president shared.

Since the start of the Gaza war following the Hamas-led Palestinian terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish state has been playing EuroLeague and EuroCup games in neutral venues outside of the country. Euroleague Commercial Assets (ECA) member clubs met on Tuesday to discuss the current situation in Israel and Gaza, following the recently announced ceasefire, and after “thoughtful deliberation,” ECA clubs decided to resume games in Israel in December, they announced in a released statement.

“Until then, Euroleague Basketball will continue to carefully monitor developments, stay in close contact with local and foreign authorities, visiting teams, and all relevant organizations … and ensure that the safety and well-being of everyone involved remain the top priority,” the statement read. “Euroleague Basketball and its participating clubs welcome the recent peace plan with optimism and hope. The organization reaffirms its belief in the power of basketball to bring people and communities together, and its commitment to contributing to peace through the shared values of sport, respect, and unity.”

Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar said the decision “reflects the new international reality Israel is in following the signing of the agreement to bring the hostages home.”

“Sport is a bridge that connects us all, and the return of the games carries with it a powerful and meaningful message,” he added in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “The State of Israel warmly welcomes the teams, athletes, staff, and fans who will be arriving in Israel.”

The last European basketball game played in Israel took place on Oct. 5, 2023, a mere two days before the Hamas-led massacre in Israel. Maccabi Tel Aviv, six-time champions, and Hapoel Tel Aviv are the Israeli basketball teams in this season’s Euroleague, while Hapoel Jerusalem is competing in the EuroCup.

“With the announcement of the end of the war, behind the scenes began strong work against the Euroleague in collaboration with all the factors in order to return the games to Israel as quickly as possible,” said Hapoel Jerusalem. “We are happy that the efforts have paid off, and after more than two years of wandering – we are coming home.”

Hapoel Tel Aviv thanked EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejūnas, the organization’s management, and all EuroLeague clubs “for their understanding and support.” The team’s owner, Ofer Yannay, said the move “is an important step towards returning to normality, and it is especially exciting to know that our fans will once again be able to attend EuroLeague games up close, right where they belong.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv said it had been working quietly “behind the scenes” to enable Motiejūnas to make the decision to resume top European basketball competitions to Israel.

“This is an achievement of great importance for Israeli sports and the State of Israel, also from a diplomatic perspective,” the team stated. “The Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball club has proven once again that it is one of the leading and most influential forces in European sports. We will meet soon at the arena.”

Ari Steinberg, president of the Israel Basketball Super League, said: “This is a right and fair decision in favor of European basketball and the joy of hundreds of thousands of fans in Israel.”

“Over the past few weeks, we have done everything we could, working with clubs and other partners, to bring matches home, and I am delighted that these efforts have paid off,” Steinberg noted. “We all hope that FIBA [International Basketball Federation] will also make a similar decision and will announce the return of the Champions League games (BCL) and national team games as soon as possible. This is an important moment for all of Israeli sports. Am Yisrael Chai (Long Live Israel).”