Kossar's Bialys Opening Upper East Side Location

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After more than 80 years in business on the Lower East Side, Kossar's Bialys is going where it's never gone before: uptown.

The vaunted Jewish bakery will soon open its third-ever location on the corner of York Avenue and East 75th Street, a Kossar's manager told Patch on Friday. Signage had appeared in recent days on the southwest corner storefront, which had been largely vacant for years.

Kossar's is aiming to open the shop by April or May, according to general manager Sharon B.

On the menu will be the same items that have drawn crowds to Kossar's Lower East Side shop since it opened in 1936. Chief among them, bialys: the small, chewy rolls similar to bagels but prepared differently, with stuffing-filled dips at their center instead of a hole.

Other likely offerings will include various kinds of lox, sable, a dozen different varieties of cream cheese, salad spreads and pletzels, a traditional Jewish "onion board."

"You must have the babkas, the rugelachs, the black-and-whites," Sharon said.

Besides those mainstays, Kossar's will likely tweak the menu based on feedback from Upper East Side customers about what they want, Sharon said.

Kossar's Bialys spent its first three decades on Clinton Street before relocating to Grand Street in the 1960s. Its current owners, Alan Phillips and Marom Unger, purchased Kossar's in 2018, and the company recently announced it would open a second location near Hudson Yards.