As Lipkin’s Bakery prepares to close, deli watchers must ponder life without knishes

Fate has not been kind to the knish.

The filled-pastry snack, which traces its origin to the Jews of Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century (a Hot Pocket 1.0, if you will), is falling victim to the overall decline of the Jewish deli and, even more specifically, to the Jewish bakeries that supply them.

One by one, they are closing.

Lipkin’s Bakery in Northeast Philadelphia, one of the city’s few kosher bakeries and perhaps its last knish wholesaler, plans to close, at least temporarily. Its last day open to the public will be Monday, with the last deliveries to the delis and synagogues concluding a week later. The building will be sold, said owner Steven Nawalany.

The closing will have a ripple effect throughout the area. Lipkin’s has many commercial accounts, a cadre of delis that heat them up to serve as a side dish and sell cold from the counter. Say it “keh-NISH,” by the way.

Nawalany said he wants to reopen Lipkin’s as a wholesale-only bakery. Wholesale work, free of the vagaries of walk-in customers, would also allow the store to achieve the so-called circle K, a higher level of kosher standing, because he would close on the Sabbath.

Nawalany is adamant that he would reopen outside of Philadelphia, citing the “unpredictability of this city’s regulations” as one reason he wants to move out of the city. His location also dictates his pricing, he said. Nawalany said his customers will not pay more, while suburban bakeries can command more. Many Lipkin’s customers have bought cakes, cookies, hamantaschen, and challah from the store since it opened on Castor Avenue near Rhawn Street in 1975, after it moved from its longtime home in South Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: From the archives (2014): Hesh's Bakery, also on Castor Avenue, has closed

“We’ve tried [to raise prices] and it turns very ugly,” said Nawalany, 55, who was a longtime Lipkin’s customer, who, with business partner J Franciotti, bought the bakery from Mitch Lipkin in 2016.

Lipkin’s also had a satellite store in South Philadelphia from 2018 to 2020.

Nawalany said he would miss the customers — the melting pot that represents the Northeast. “We do more business on Christmas and Easter than we do on Rosh Hashanah,” he said. “All great people.”

Cathy Coughlin, shopping at Lipkin’s Tuesday, said she and her husband would particularly miss the rye bread. “The best rye bread in the world,” she said. “And the cake and everything, too. We’ll have nothing around here.”

At Ben & Irv’s Deli in Huntingdon Valley, owner Michael Young was concerned after learning about Lipkin’s impending shutdown. “This is a big problem,” Young said.

When Lipkin’s knishes were unavailable, Ben & Irv’s went to distributors who sourced knishes to bakeries in Maryland and New York. “They’re not the same,” Young said. “Lipkin’s has a different knish. It’s lighter. The others are too heavy and doughy, too much to eat in one sitting.” He said he was not sure of his next step.

Knishes were not hard to find through most of the 20th century in areas with large Jewish populations such as Northeast Philadelphia, Lower Merion, and Cherry Hill.

As time passed and people moved away, the corner delis and bakeries gave way to supermarkets and large commercial bakeries not interested in creating a niche product.

Potato is Lipkin’s most popular filling, followed by cheese, rice, spinach, kasha (buckwheat groats), mushroom, and broccoli. Lipkin’s also makes a pizza knish that has been a hit in school lunch bags for the last 40 years.

Labor is a key reason that most delis and restaurants don’t make their own knishes, though some do it in a pinch. Hymie’s in Lower Merion and Knishes & Dishes in Lafayette Hill buy assorted flavors through a distributor but choose to make their own chopped chicken liver knishes, a harder-to-find variety. Most of the commercial knishes are par-baked and frozen; the deli applies an egg wash and finishes the baking.

Jeff Solomon, an owner of Kaplan’s New Model Bakery in Northern Liberties, buys knishes, Danish, and hamantaschen from Lipkin’s to sell at his shop. He also buys knishes wholesale from Lipkin’s and sells them to delis.

During a chat Tuesday, Solomon wondered about making knishes at his own bakery. He concluded that the machinery required to make knishes would be “crazy expensive” and doubted that it would be worth it, given the declining demand. Solomon, 70, started as a bread distributor in 1977 and bought Kaplan’s in 1988 with a partner.

The art of knish making is not totally obsolete. Hershel’s East Side Deli at Reading Terminal Market and the Kibitz Room in Cherry Hill make theirs in-house.

It’s not lost on the younger generation, either. Kibitz Room owner Brandon Parish, 28, said his staff makes them “because it’s better than anything else you could possibly bring in. We wouldn’t stand out otherwise.”