Bakery cafés in New York

Veniero’s, Ferrara and the Italian pasticceria

Veniero’s, at 342 East 11th Street between First and Second Avenues, has been run by the Veniero family since it opened.² Its pasticceria (pastry shop) counter sells butter cookies, biscotti, cannoli, sfogliatelle (layered, shell-shaped pastries) and tiramisù, and the cheesecake is its best-known item. Prizes in Rome and Bologna and at the 1939 New York World’s Fair built its trade, and the ovens switched from coal to gas by the 1980s.² The doors close at 22:00 from Sunday to Thursday and an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays.

At the 2014 Feast of San Gennaro, Ferrara unveiled what it called the world’s largest cannolo.¹ Its counter at 195 Grand Street opens at 09:00 and closes at 22:00, or 23:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. Across the river, Fortunato Brothers at 289 Manhattan Avenue in Williamsburg serves pastry and coffee daily until 23:00.

Bagels, knishes and the bacon, egg and cheese

Bagels were once a union product. Bagel Bakers Local 338, formed in the early 1900s by about 300 Jewish bagel bakers in Manhattan, held its meetings in Yiddish, and its strike in February 1962 cut the city’s bagel supply by an estimated 85%.³ That same year Lender’s in New Haven began using Daniel Thompson’s bagel machine, which helped make the bagel a mass-produced product.³

Bagel shops still open early. H&H Midtown Bagels East at 1551 2nd Avenue starts at 05:30, as does La Bagel Delight at 284 7th Avenue in Park Slope. The bacon, egg and cheese costs more than it did: in February 2025, as egg prices climbed, a Bronx deli owner raised his from $4.50 to $6.00.⁴

On East Houston Street, Yonah Schimmel sells potato and kasha (buckwheat groats) knishes; its founder started with a pushcart around 1910, and the shop moved to 137 East Houston Street when the street was widened for the subway in the 1930s.⁵ It opens daily 09:30–19:00.

The Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue

Across Amsterdam Avenue from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Hungarian Pastry Shop at number 1030 has served Morningside Heights since 1961, when a Hungarian couple opened it; the Binioris family has owned it since 1976.⁶ Columbia students and professors work there without Wi-Fi, which the café doesn’t provide. Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic was written there, and in 2014 Fodor’s named it one of New York’s ten most storied literary haunts.⁶

The café appears in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and in Gossip Girl.⁶ It opens at 07:30 on weekdays and 08:30 at weekends, closes at 20:30 every day, and has a few outdoor tables on the avenue.

Cronuts, croissants and sourdough

Dominique Ansel introduced the Cronut, a croissant-doughnut hybrid, at his SoHo bakery on May 10, 2013; by the third day more than 100 people were queuing outside, and within nine days he had applied to trademark the name.⁷ The bakery is at 189 Spring Street and opens 08:00–19:00 from Monday to Saturday.

Newer bakery cafés lean Scandinavian and French. La Cabra on Second Avenue describes itself as a Scandinavian coffee roastery and sourdough bakery.⁸ In Brooklyn, Colson Patisserie at 374 9th Street opens at 07:30, Smør Bakery at 361 Court Street keeps 08:00–17:00 daily, and Ando Patisserie at 174 Conselyea Street in Williamsburg serves daily 07:00–19:00.