Weekend Column: ‘Ode to the Zabar’s Café Cinnamon Bun’

By Chloe Cheimets

In January, I moved to San Francisco after fifteen years in New York City. My husband got a dream job offer across the country and off we went. As they say — when being gender-inclusive — happy spouse, happy house. 

Our last apartment was on West 73rd Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, a fifth-floor walkup with a neighbor who was extremely diligent about practicing scales on his French horn every day. I don’t miss hiking up five floors with groceries and I don’t miss the French horn scales, but I do miss everything else about my old neighborhood, which we called home for seven years. 

I miss the people who love to chat up strangers around them and kvetch. I miss the park. I miss the Eleanor Roosevelt statue at the 72nd Street entrance to the river. I miss the dollar paperbacks outside Westsider Books. Most of all I miss the food – delicious, unpretentious, abundant. In San Francisco they don’t give you free rice when you order out an Indian or Chinese entrée. It’s unconscionable!

But the one food item I miss the most, which I go to bed dreaming about, is the Zabar’s Café cinnamon bun. 

Now, what it seems you can get anywhere, in SF, NYC, or otherwise, is a puff-pastry kind of cinnamon roll. It’s usually flaky, glazed, a little dry, with a hint of cinnamon flavor. Sometimes it’s a version of a Pain aux Raisins. I do NOT like this cinnamon pastry form factor. I do NOT eat a cinnamon bun to feel delicate and French. I eat a cinnamon bun to feel American and gluttonous. I eat a cinnamon bun to get covered in goo. After a good cinnamon bun, I should feel like I took a tranquilizer. 

On this, the Zabar’s bun delivers. It’s huge, practically the size of an adult human hand. It’s mushy, doughy, gooey. None of this glazed nonsense – it’s slathered in a thick topping of vanilla frosting, like a cupcake. It’s so sweet, it makes my molars hurt. When you eat it, you’ve probably fulfilled your caloric intake for the day. 

If you really want to be overcome with bliss, buy it, and then go next door to Zabar’s proper to buy a wedge of Dutch gouda. Go east to the park, and while sitting in the grass, slice a piece of the gouda and a hunk of bun and eat them together, cheese on top of carb. The sharp tang of the gouda paired with the deep sweet of the pastry is otherworldly. For a moment, you’ll have nothing to complain about. 

In researching this piece, I saw that you can order a tray of Zabar’s cinnamon buns to be shipped to California. A tray is a lot. If I buy it, I’m worried that I’ll overdose on such a behemoth volume of buns. I’m also afraid having them in my fridge will only make me miss the Upper West Side more. But, on the other hand, maybe I’ll be brave and take the plunge. If I do, I think I’ll take my bun to the park atop the freezing, blustery hill near my new apartment and eat it, dreaming of home.

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