The great poppyseed strudel competition
By Tom Teicholz at 16 June, 2009, 2:41 pm
Finding strudel is not easy as it once was, and although occasionally one can find apple or cherry strudel, or even cheese, you have to already been initiated into the habit of poppyseed strudel to even ask for it.
I headed up to the Hungarian pastry Shop on 110th and Amsterdam and ordered a slice that immediately induced a proustian serotonin release.
The pastry shop’s poppy seed strudel was as I remembered it — with some raisins in it, dense, intense, and transcendental. But I found the strudel itself, the pasry shell not so great — a little tough and not flaky enough.
Once upon a time Second in the 80s was host to a whole host of Hungarian stores and restaurants, places like Paprika Weiss, and its competitor Paprila Roth, and Mocca restaurant. But today they are all gone.
However, as Nora Ephron noted in a New York Times Op-Ed piece, a new Hungarian restaurant has opened there — it;s called Andre’s Cafe and it’s a branch of a Queens establishment called Andres Bakery.
I visited it on Seocnd Avenue between 84th and 85th street — it’s a hole in the wall– a long narrow alley of a restaurant — but it serves all the favorite dishes. Ephron has raved about their cabbage strudel. But I was there for the poppy strudel.
The poppyseed was very moist and rich — and the pastry was flaky in the extreme. But If I had to choose between the two, I would have to make a solomonic decision and say that I prefered the popyseed strudel filling at the Hungary Pastry shop, and the covering and whole experience of the strudel at Andre’s.
In either case, I’m guessing that my blood levels now include a high dose of poppy (which reminds me of the Seinfeld where they flunk the drug test because of eating a poppy bagel).
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