Robert's Market Report

We made our annual trip to The Great Northeast yesterday in search of holiday baked goods and a few other delectables. For those who do not reside in Philadelphia, The Great Northeast is a wide swath of the furthest reaches of the city, halfway to Trenton, where a great many of its residents reside. The Great Northeast is to Philadelphia what Queens is to New York City, and the size and design of the homes isn't much different from a Forest Hills rowhouse.

Click on "View Larger Map" for a key to the push pin symbols, which reflect both the vendors we visited and others we have tried in the past or are on our list for a future trip.


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Our first stop was to try and find Moish's Addision Bakery from a previous trip a few years back. Alas, it appears to be of of business, even though there's a web site. We journeyed all the way up to Red Lion Road in search of this classic kosher bakery, which to our taste did onion rolls and salt sticks as well as it did babka and rugelach.

Disappointed, we headed south and detoured off Bustleton Avenue to the Krewstown Shopping Centger and Steve Stein's Famous Deli. It was late on a busy Friday morning and you had to take a number for servide, but that only gave us about five minutes to peruse the plethora of smoked fishes and salads in the cases. We walked out the door with whitefish salad, lox, red potato salad, hummus with pine nuts (pre-packaged), and a Bartlett pear from the produce aisle. The whitefish salad was quite good, but a bit too smooth and low in fish flavor to my taste, though I think many would be find these characteristics to their liking; I just prefer mine fish salads fishy. The very good price of $3.99/pound probably accounts for the high proportion of mayo to fish. I am saving the lox I purchased until Sunday morning, but it looks like it was carved expertly. I selected regular (salty) lox, and both regular and nova are available in either belly or regular cuts; the belly cut is fattier and prices, $9.99/half pound, vs. $7.99 for regular cut.

Back on Bustleton and heading south, we passed Bell's Market, saving this palace of all tasty things Eastern European for another trip, and switched over to Castor Avenue. We made two quick stops at Lipkin's and Hesh's Eclair Bakery, finding nothing compelling (other than challahs, which we wern't in the market for today) at Lipkin's, and limiting ourselves to some stick raspberry sticks and onion board (a flatbread which I used to hold the whitefish salad when I got home)at Hesh's. At Weiss, Bakery which I think is the best of the Kosher bakeries along this stretch of the Northeast, we picked up seven layer cake (a variant on Doboshtort) and some assorted cookies.

Our last stop was in the Northeast's Tacony section, at a German old-style, neighborhood bakery, Haegele's. You can find photos and notes from last year's visit here. This year we walked off with assorted Christmas cookies, anise springerle, and a brownie for She Who Must Be Obeyed. I had to restrain myself from also purchasing one of their evil buttercakes.