Smoked fish savant Saul Zabar of Zabar’s deli dies at 97 - The Jewish Chronicle

Saul Zabar, the smoked fish purveyor who transformed his parents’ deli Zabar’s into a New York institution, passed away at the age of 97 on Tuesday.

Zabar stood at the helm of the eponymous Upper West Side grocery store for over 70 years, providing New Yorkers with ample supplies of smoked fish, artisanal cheese, and fresh-baked rugelach made from his bubbe’s recipe. Under Zabar’s stewardship, what began in 1934 as a shoebox-sized storefront grew into a world-renowned enterprise amassing nearly $55 million in yearly sales.

Saul Zabar, born in Brooklyn on June 4, 1928, was the eldest of Louis and Lillian Zabar’s three sons. But he had no intention of taking over the family business that his parents started as the smoked fish department of a Daitch supermarket on Broadway, telling The New York Times in 2008: “I really came into Zabar’s as a temporary assignment.”

Instead, Zabar aspired to become a doctor, but after his father died in 1950 at just 49, he left his studies at the University of Kansas to help out at the family store – and never left.

Saul, left, and his brother Stanley ran their parents' store together for more than seven decades. (Photo: Zabar's)[Missing Credit]

Over the years, with his brother Stanley and business partner Murray Klein, Zabar consolidated the five smaller Zabar’s outposts that opened around the Upper West Side into an iconic 20,000 square foot grocery, cookware shop and cafe, spanning nearly the entire blockfront of Broadway between West 80th and 81st Streets. Known for their gourmet fare, the Zabar brothers claimed to have introduced New York City to brie cheese in the 1960s and, in the 70s, to sun-dried tomatoes and gnocchi.

The eldest Zabar brother remained steadfastly involved in all aspects of the business up until his death, from overseeing the roasting of the store’s own coffee beans – of which they sell more than 400,000 pounds per year– to standing vigil over the deli counters, where they sell an estimated 2,000 pounds of smoked fish per week.

“There’s a romance about what we do,” he said in 2012. “We have a modern appearance, but we really do things the way they were done 40, 50, 75, even 200 years ago.”

The Zabar's store, which includes a grocery, deli counter, cookware shop and cafe, encompasses an entire blockfront of Manhattan's Broadway. (Photo: Zabar's)[Missing Credit]

While his youngest brother Eli established his own chain of stores called Eli Zabar on the East Side of Manhattan in 1973, the family insisted there was never animosity – and the primary Zabar’s institution will remain a family business despite its patriarch’s passing. Two of his children with wife Carole Ann Kishner, whom he married in 1968, act as the store’s senior manager and assistant vice president.

"My father's legacy lives on in every bagel, every slice of smoked fish, every cup of coffee, and in the countless conversations that fill our store each day," his daughter Ann Zabar said. "He poured his heart into this place—just as he did into every pot of coffee he brewed—and his influence will always guide us."

In addition to his daughter Ann, Zabar is survived by his wife and two other children, Aaron and Rachel Zabar, his four grandchildren, and his brothers Stanley and Eli.

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