A Kosher Restaurant’s Passover-Friendly Dessert, and Fascinating Backstory

Pre-pandemic photo.

With Passover a day away, Landmark West took a look at one local bakery’s roots, and a popular Kosher-for-Passover cake there.

My Most Favorite Food, located at 247 West 72nd Street, has a cake called a Marjolaine, a classic French meringue pastry. “It’s a delicious suitable-for-Passover choice. People stop me on the street and ask, ‘Is this cake really OK for Passover?’” owner Doris Schechter told Claudie Benjamin for a story for preservation organization Landmark West.

Schechter opened My Most Favorite Food 12 years ago. Her own story is filled with trials and successes. Her family fled Vienna and then was sheltered in Italy, the Landmark West story notes.

“The family was then among the nearly 1,000 mostly Jewish refugees who came to the US aboard USNS Henry Gibbins. At the time, they believed they would have to return after the war was over. The group sequestered for almost two years at Fort Ontario used as a camp for displaced people in Oswego NY.  During this period Doris’ father died.  Her mother brought Doris and her younger sister to New York City where they had relatives.”

She moved to Long Island and eventually opened a bakery there, later moving it to the Upper East Side and then to West 72nd.

The past year has been rough, but her family has helped keep the business going.

“The pandemic period has been a nightmare period of uncertainty,” says Doris. Her team, including one of her daughters, Dena and her husband, Scott Magram, have been working tirelessly with other staff to keep the business alive.

The restaurant’s website tells a story of Schechter’s father: “Though he was driven out of two countries because of his heritage, he was always proud to be a practicing Jew. When they were living in the small town of Guardiagrele in Italy, he even wrote to the Italian embassy and asked them to send matzoh for Passover.”

Check out the website here, and read the whole Landmark West piece here.

Happy Passover everyone!