NEW YORK — Saul Zabar, the iconic New York City market owner, whose name was synonymous with fine food and smoked fish, died Tuesday. He was 97.
Zabar had been hospitalized with a brain bleed, his daughter Ann told The New York Times. His daughter Rachel, who once worked behind the counter as a teenager, announced his death on social media.
For 70 years, after leaving college to return home to Manhattan to help with the family business, Zabar, the oldest of three brothers, made it a mission to keep New Yorkers fed.
“I started here in 1950, when my father died,” Zabar, who had wanted to become a doctor, told the New York Daily News in 2008. “I thought I would spend a few years here and then go on about my business. Because I wasn’t really interested in this business, it was not something that I had imagined I would be involved with. But that year grew …”
As the business expanded, Zabar became one of the city’s defining characters. In his trademark khakis and polo shirt, he fought a price war with Cuisinart, labeled crawfish as lobsters (until they were forced to stop) and built a gourmet coffee business from scratch.
But it was the fish — the fish — that gave Zabar’s its start and its sterling reputation, and enough money to add those additional offerings.
“It’s got to have taste. Not too this, not too that,” Zabar told the New York Sun in 2007, when asked to describe what he looked for in a fish.
From his Upper West Side perch, Zabar quietly built an empire that became world renowned. Zabar, along with his brother Stanley and partner Murray Klein, guided the business for years after taking it over from Zabar’s parents, Louis and Lillian, who opened the shop in 1934.
But it was Saul who personified the market.
The store, with satellite shops across Manhattan, became well known for its gourmet fare, including coffee, fish, baked goods and nearly 800 different types of cheese.
Over time, the family consolidated the operation into a single market covering nearly 20,000 square feet at Broadway and West 80th Street and commanding nearly $55 million in yearly sales.
Zabar’s at its peak employed nearly 200 people.
New York Mayor Eric Adams called Saul “a true New York legend.”
“He gave the city lox, love and a place to argue over babka,” Adams said. “Zabar’s isn’t just a store, it’s a slice of NYC soul. May his memory be a blessing.”
“I grew up going to Zabar’s,” Assemblyman Zohran Mamdami, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said in a social media post. “So many of my childhood memories center around the best lox in NYC (which is saying something). With Saul Zabar’s passing today, the Upper West Side has lost a legend who turned his parents’ humble store into a culinary institution.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul called Zabar’s death “a great loss for New York City and anyone who’s ever enjoyed the ultimate bagel and lox.”
Zabar is survived by his wife, brothers, four children and four grandchildren, all of whom keep the Zabar’s legacy alive.
“As Louis taught us, to succeed as a family business, you have to love each other, and love the business,” Zabar’s says on its website. “In our case, great food, great service, great prices, great folks. We ask you, what’s not to love?”
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