![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/73572340afeb6a08be5fc438c75d96ee89-IMG-6373.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong> Saul Zabar, the elder of the brothers who built Zabar\u2019s from a local Upper West Side grocery shop into an international landmark of whitefish, died on October 7 at 97. Today, we\u2019re republishing this cover story from 1992 about the fractious relationship among the store\u2019s controlling partners.<\/p>\n This article was featured in New York\u2019s One Great Story<\/a> newsletter. Sign up her<\/a>.<\/p>\n Murray Klein, one-third owner of the city\u2019s premier delicatessen, picks up his lunch in the busy kitchen of Zabar\u2019s at 11:45 on a weekday morning. In this domain of his, he has a dizzying choice of delectables at hand. But he always eats the same simple meal \u2014 an egg white, tuna in water, chopped vegetables, unbuttered bread.<\/p>\n A cook pops the yolk from the egg and hands what\u2019s left to Klein. He gulps it down in two bites. The rest of his lunch is in a brown bag. Just before leaving the kitchen, Klein stops. His green eyes narrow, and his lips curl with anger.<\/p>\n \u201cSaul Zabar,\u201d he bellows like a bailiff, \u201cis the world\u2019s biggest s\u2014.\u201d Saul also owns one-third of Zabar\u2019s. \u201d Nobody in the kitchen misses a beat. They\u2019ve heard it before. Klein might just as well have shouted the name of his third partner, Stanley Zabar \u2014 as he often has. But unlike his 64-year-old brother Saul, who returns to the store most days after his rounds with Brooklyn fish smokers and coffee roasters, 59-year-old Stanley has been absent for months. Perhaps he\u2019s stayed away out of pique over last winter\u2019s forced departure of his son, David, as manager of Zabar\u2019s sanctum sanctorum, its smoked-fish counter.<\/p>\n At one time, this command-level combat \u2014 by now an actual Thirty Years\u2019 War waged under the big orange logo on Broadway near 80th Street \u2014 might have been good for Zabar\u2019s. It energized the place, sales advancing inexorably \u2014 currently to $39 million a year.<\/p>\n The store has earned worldwide cachet, to which the regular presence of busloads of Japanese tourists attests. But this \u201cmost rambunctious and chaotic of all delicatessens,\u201d as Nora Ephron has called it, is about much more than money or fame. Above all, it\u2019s the cultural as well as gastronomic epicenter of the Upper West Side \u2014 especially on a Saturday morning. Where else could a meat counterman be overheard telling a customer who is being a little bit noodgy, \u201cMr. Perlman, I won\u2019t tell you how to play the violin, and you won\u2019t tell me how to cut salami\u201d?<\/p>\n Even the famous can be in awe of Zabar\u2019s. Tony Randall looked at the name tag of Tracey Zabar, David\u2019s wife, at a food convention, and said, \u201cYou\u2019re a legend.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, no, Mr. Randall,\u201d answered Tracey. \u201cYou\u2019re a legend. I\u2019m just a grocer\u2019s wife.\u201d<\/p>\n This year, two events have ratcheted up hostilities among the three \u201cgrocers\u201d to a dangerous new level. First, Murray Klein did the unthinkable \u2014 sued his partners to force them to submit to arbitration over his demand that they buy his share of the business for $6 million or else sell him their shares for $12 million. Then came David\u2019s abrupt departure. Of the eight children of the three partners, only he was dedicated to carrying on the business. Who could oust a Zabar? Not even Murray Klein. It took another Zabar \u2014 in this case, David\u2019s uncle Saul.<\/p>\n \n Seen at right: Stanley Zabar, Saul Zabar, and Murray Klein. By most measures, Zabar\u2019s hums along normally, generating the retail energy of a Hoover Dam. It sells up to 1,500 pounds of its own coffee per week, 1,400 pounds of Italian Parmesan cheese (Reggiano and Padano), and more smoked fish than any other store in America. Though \u201cappetizing\u201d originally spurred the store\u2019s growth, Klein has made it king of housewares as well. Where else can you choose among seven kinds of kitchen peelers? Or eight different garlic presses? Zabar\u2019s is the king of the coffee-makers and espresso-makers. Ditto for French copperware, ranging from a three-ounce butter warmer at $4.98 to an 80-quart pot, with a cover that weak wrists couldn\u2019t budge, that goes for $1,000. Like everything else in the store, those gargantuan pots actually sell \u2014 most recently to a Texas chili-maker and to a Wisconsin woman who will install hers at hearthside to hold kindling.<\/p>\n Yet for all the store\u2019s unremitting bustle, sharp eyes do detect problems at Zabar\u2019s \u2014 not least of which are Murray Klein\u2019s. \u201cZabar\u2019s is not good now,\u201d he says. \u201cNot at all good.\u201d David Liederman, the restaurateur and owner of David\u2019s Cookies, who almost bought the store in 1985, puts it bluntly: \u201cZabar\u2019s is running on cruise control.\u201d John Howard, the investment banker who nearly brought off the sale, says flatly, \u201cZabar\u2019s just reeks of neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n The heart of the problem is that Klein, the undisputed dynamo of Zabar\u2019s, wants out. He\u2019s said it for years. But now, at 68, he\u2019s acting as if he means it. No longer does he open the Zabar\u2019s door himself at six o\u2019clock every morning. Nor does he joyously wage price wars with Macy\u2019s and Bloomingdale\u2019s. Once, he called overseas constantly to haggle over huge troves of merchandise. Now he\u2019s just as likely to be on the phone to the London auction houses, bidding on Georg Jensen sterling-silver pieces \u2014 a passion that has turned him into a major collector. A copy of The Antique Trader lies open on his desk in the front of the store.<\/p>\n One morning not long ago, Klein was nowhere to be found. He\u2019d gone to buy ballet videos for one of his grandchildren, a manager confided. In his heyday, Klein would have sent somebody else on that kind of errand.<\/p>\n Klein\u2019s suit, filed in state Supreme Court, claims that his partners are trying to prevent him from retiring \u201cas key man who developed Zabar\u2019s from an obscure corner store on the Upper West Side to a thriving New York landmark.\u201d Under terms of a partnership agreement signed in 1971, a partner\u2019s share can be bought by the others only upon his death or \u201ceffective disability\u201d \u2014 but for only $3 million, half of what Klein wants. His suit claims that Saul and Stanley are \u201cusing their majority control \u2026 to make sure that he works at Zabar\u2019s until the day he dies.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that the Zabar brothers can\u2019t afford to buy out Klein for $6 million. It\u2019s just that neither they nor anyone else knows how long Zabar\u2019s would prosper if Klein were no longer commanding the floor, endlessly rearranging displays, mingling joviality with gruffness. Saul and Stanley surely don\u2019t want to pay $6 million to find out. Klein is sure he knows the answer: If he retires without a suitable replacement, his suit warns, the business \u201cwill seriously decline in value.\u201d Judge Walter Schackman is expected to rule on Klein\u2019s demand for arbitration before summer\u2019s end.<\/p>\n While Klein attends marriages of employees and christenings of their infants, he claims in his suit that neither of his partners knows more than a few of their workers well \u2014 200 in all, most of them of Hispanic, Russian, or Asian origin. And while the two Zabars take issue, in their own court papers, with Klein\u2019s demand for arbitration over his wish to be bought out, they don\u2019t dispute his flair for merchandising.<\/p>\n With Klein, flair follows function. When he ran out of room for housewares in the store\u2019s original cramped space, for example, he started hanging pots, pans, towels, even braids of garlic from the ceiling. Though born of necessity, the \u201changing bazaar\u201d was an innovation that was copied everywhere. When housewares moved upstairs in 1978, leaving the main floor mostly for edibles, Klein made sure that the stairway was in the rear. \u201cIt\u2019s like a narcotic, smelling the cheese and the coffee and the salamis as shoppers make their way back,\u201d points out John Howard. \u201cBy the time they get upstairs to housewares, they\u2019re primed to buy.\u201d But only if the price is right.<\/p>\n \u201c[Klein is] one of the few guys who have a feel for what will sell,\u201d says Stanley Schwalb, a wholesaler of kitchenware. \u201cAnd he passes on what he does well to the consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein is the only member of his Ukrainian-born family to have survived the Holocaust. He remembers winter dawns in a Russian labor camp where, as an emaciated teenager, he\u2019d wake up in an open trench covered with the frozen urine of the men stuffed in with him. By struggle he survived. By struggle he continues to live even now, as an aging multimillionaire, when he could walk away from Zabar\u2019s and live in luxury. In retirement, he\u2019d still collect his one-third share of profits along with his pension \u2014 to say nothing of Social Security benefits. Steve Hart, senior manager at the store, remembers hearing a longtime friend of Klein\u2019s pleading with him to retire now and \u201cstop letting this thing cat him up.\u201d But the anger that consumes him also fuels him. I have to work every day, he says. \u201cNobody makes me do it. I just have to.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein arrived in New York in 1950, direct from a displaced-persons camp in Italy. He was then 26 vears old. He was hired as a delivery boy for the five grocery stores along Broadway owned by Louis Zabar. That same year, the elder Zabar died of cancer at the age of 49. His portrait, hanging in the store\u2019s cluttered upstairs office, shows a stocky, restless-looking man. The youngest of his three sons, Eli, is said to take after him the most. Klein calls the founding Zabar a \u201ctyrant.\u201d He seems surprised when the term is also applied to him.<\/p>\n After seven years at Zabar\u2019s, Klein struck out on his own, starting a housewares store a few doors away. In 1955, he\u2019d married Edith Bronner, a refugee like himself, who as a teenager had lived as a partisan in the forests of Hungary. In the \u201960s, middle brother Stanley Zabar was working as a lawyer for a midtown firm. Eli had brief careers as a teacher and as a builder while working part-time at Zabar\u2019s. Then he headed to the East Side with his wife, Abbie (he has since remarried), in the early \u201970s to start the high-priced E.A.T. food shop. Only Saul, who\u2019d dreamed of being a doctor or a farmer, worked full-time as a \u201cgrocer.\u201d It didn\u2019t prosper. By the time Murray Klein agreed to retum to Zabar\u2019s as a full partner, in 1962, only the current store at 80th Street remained in family hands. Its reputation grew steadily \u2014 though not beyond the neighborhood. In 1975, Murray Klein would change that situation dramatically.<\/p>\n The most desirable new appliance of the day was the Cuisinart food processor. It didn\u2019t yet have any serious rivals, and its price was strictly maintained at $190 by Cuisinart \u2014 until Klein discounted it to $149. Brashly, Klein taped up Bloomingdale\u2019s advertisement with the higher price crossed out. Cuisinart stopped selling to Zabar\u2019s.<\/p>\n With speed and stealth, Klein assembled a nationwide network of small retailers who ordered Cuisinarts and resold them to him at a small profit. Only when Klein\u2019s stash of Cuisinarts reached 200 did he announce, on New York\u2019s \u201cSales & Bargains\u201d page, that he was selling Cuisinarts at $135 \u2014 $14 less than he\u2019d charged before Cuisinart had cut off Zabar\u2019s. All 200 sold out in a single day, and Klein gave rain checks for 966 more. It\u2019s hard to believe Klein\u2019s claim that he didn\u2019t lose money in the battle of the Cuisinarts. But it\u2019s indisputable that the publicity for Zabar\u2019s was priceless.<\/p>\n Still, Klein still wasn\u2019t satisfied. After Stanley Zabar read about a Yonkers auto-parts dealer who had won a price-fixing suit against Ford, Zabar\u2019s sued Cuisinart in federal court for restraint of trade. The store was represented by the lawyer from the Yonkers case \u2014 a loyal customer of Zabar\u2019s. The case was settled out of court when Cuisinart agreed to sell to Zabar\u2019s free of price controls. (By then, competitive processors had achieved the same result.)<\/p>\n Klein\u2019s next opponent was Macy\u2019s. Determined to draw a higher class of customer to its new gourmet zone, Marketplace in the Cellar \u2014 and maybe lure away Zabar\u2019s customers \u2014 Macy\u2019s cut the prices of smoked salmon, Swiss chocolate, and even, at Christmas season, Beluga caviar. The store got its wish, at least for a while. The fashionable set came to West 34th Street. Even David Rockefeller stood in line to buy caviar. But Klein cut prices as well and managed through a clever and memorable publicity campaign to bring new customers into the store. In the heat of the Battle of the Beluga, the price of caviar was driven down relentlessly \u2014 to $120 from more than $200 for a 14-ounce tin. \u201cWe were handing over a $50 bill for each pound we sold,\u201d says a former Macy\u2019s employee.<\/p>\n While Klein kept a high profile on the cluttered floor of Zabar\u2019s, Saul Zabar was rarely seen. That\u2019s because he spent his days in Brooklyn, poking sides of salmon and slurping samples of black coffee and personally supervising the roasting of those that he chose. He still does it. Saul is legendarily finicky. He may reject all fish smoked in weather that\u2019s too damp or too dry. Even when he\u2019s accepted an order, he may reject it upon retasting it after it reaches Zabar\u2019s. One supplier remembers seeing Saul so angry about a whitefish he\u2019d just retasted after its arrival at the store that he threw it down and stamped on it.<\/p>\n Despite Saul\u2019s demands, suppliers don\u2019t walk away. It\u2019s not only the store\u2019s big buying power that keeps them coming back. It\u2019s the firm\u2019s practice of paying its bills in seven days \u2014 rare promptness that engenders great tolerance for whatever Saul wants. For years, Klein bought imported smoked fish while Saul handled domestic smokings. Unlike Saul, Klein expected the importer to check quality. Only when a customer complained about imported fish would Klein taste it himself. A few years ago, Saul complained to Klein that he wasn\u2019t being attentive enough to quality. \u201cThen you buy the fish,\u201d Klein told his partner and walked away. Now Saul\u2019s dominion over the fish counter is total. According to Klein\u2019s suit, since Saul started managing the fish counter, \u201cthis business has declined substantially.\u201d<\/p>\n Stanley Zabar has been least involved in the store over the years. David Liederman jokes that \u201che wouldn\u2019t know the difference between a side of salmon and a gorilla.\u201d That\u2019s not really fair. It was Stanley who created the prepared-foods counter at the rear of the store 16 years ago. Saul wisely kept away. \u201cIf I\u2019m looking over your shoulder, you won\u2019t be able to do anything,\u201d he told Stanley. From lemon-garlic chicken to lobster bisque, from soy-marinated loin of pork to giant barbecued shrimp, the counter generates about $6.5 million per year in revenue. Murray Klein, on principle, claims never to have tasted a single item from the department that Stanley created.<\/p>\n Real estate is to Stanley what lox is to Saul \u2014 his passion. He\u2019s bought property up and down Broadway, both for the partnership and independently: apartment buildings, a parking garage, commercial buildings such as the one leased to Kiddie City at 79th Street. In the late \u201960s, Stanley acquired the site of the former Schrafft\u2019s restaurant two blocks north of the current store. With the popularity of Zabar\u2019s already on the rise, the store urgently needed larger quarters. But, as usual, the partners couldn\u2019t agree on how to make the move. The entire block front is now under renovation, about to become prime retail space that Zabar\u2019s controls. Zabar\u2019s itself has stayed put, expanding as adjoining stores become available. Even that\u2019s been stormy. The former restaurant just to the north of Zabar\u2019s was used for storage for five years after Zabar\u2019s bought it because the partners could not agree on how to enlarge the store. In 1990, it finally became home to Zabar\u2019s more than 50 varieties of bread, ranging from traditional bialys made by Kossar\u2019s bakery on the Lower East Side to vanguard sourdough-cheddar rolls made by Soutine on the Upper West Side.<\/p>\n Like most unique institutions, Zabar\u2019s is hard to analyze. When Sam Cohen, 40 years a fish cutter, says to a pretty young customer, \u201cCome, let me help you, mein tchotchkela,\u201d you know this store\u2019s roots go deep. But half the countermen are now Chinese. And Zabar\u2019s has always flouted Jewish tradition by being open on Rosh Hashanah and even Yom Kippur. It\u2019s thought of as a chic store. Yet the displays are helter-skelter, and the old-time design of the Zabar\u2019s shopping bag (1.5 million go out the door each year) hasn\u2019t been changed since it was introduced in the \u201950s.<\/p>\n The store\u2019s clientele is middle- to upper-middle class, Klein was insulted when his store was called the \u201cFauchon of Manhattan.\u201d While the Parisian delicacy emporium on the Place de la Madeleine caters to the upper classes, Klein thinks of Zabar\u2019s as being for everyone. Value counts. Items that rise too high in price are dropped \u2014 even if still in demand. Not long ago, when a customer asked for Lazzaroni\u2019s amaretti, the tiny cookies made from almonds and ground apricot pits, she was told that the price had gone too high. The store had dropped them.<\/p>\n \u201cBut how will I make my amaretto cake?\u201d she bleated.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the Ferrara brand at a lower price,\u201d said manager Steve Hart. \u201cBut you won\u2019t have their wrapping paper to light a match and watch it go up like a helicopter.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes, Klein can\u2019t help himself if he sees a customer spending too much. \u201cDon\u2019t buy that knife,\u201d he yelled at a man standing in line with a $40 German chef\u2019s knife.The $3.98 model, Klein insisted, was just as good. But Klein\u2019s obsession with value doesn\u2019t interfere with profits. An ingenious merchant, he\u2019ll surely make more by selling crateloads of $3.98 knives than he ever could on the $40 model.<\/p>\n At Murray Klein\u2019s urging, his partners agreed to put Zabar\u2019s up for sale in 1985. Or so it seemed. Store sales, then $24 million, had tripled in a decade. Net profit was close to $4 million. John Howard, an investment banker at Bear, Stearns & Company whose father had done carpentry at Zabar\u2019s, shopped it around. For the right buyer, it had the allure of a winning sports franchise. That buyer turned out to be David Liederman. The price of $26.5 million for the store and five separate properties owned by the three men was to be financed by junk bonds offered by Drexel Burnham. The deal had the personal imprimatur of Michael Milken. Liederman had big plans for Zabar\u2019s, including \u201cdoing a whole line of Zabar\u2019s branded products \u00e0 la Paul Newman.\u201d<\/p>\n The closing was held in an Olympic Tower law office in May 1985. The three partners, Liederman recalls, weren\u2019t talking to one another, as usual. Saul was munching snacks nervously. The contract was \u201cthe size of a phone book.\u201d All went smoothly until the last 15 minutes \u2014 \u201cwhen everyone was starting to feel a little giddy.\u201d Then Stanley brought up the question of the partners\u2019 store discounts.<\/p>\n \u201c \u2018What do you get?\u2019 \u201c Liederman remembers asking.<\/p>\n \u201c \u2018Forty percent.\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/p>\n \u201c \u2018What do you spend in a year?\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/p>\n \u201c \u2018About $10,000.\u2019 \u201d But that ceiling wasn\u2019t fine with Stanley Zabar. Liederman says that he insisted on unlimited charges at the same 40 percent discount. Liederman envisioned a scary scenario: After the two-year noncompete period specified by the contract ended, any of the sellers could open a store across the street from Zabar\u2019s. Then they\u2019d march in anytime and buy unlimited food and merchandise for their own store at 40 percent off. \u201c\u2018Stanley, you\u2019re blowing the deal.\u2019\u201d Liederman remembers saying. \u201cAnd then the room cleared out. A deal that took a year to put together was screwed in less than 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n The truth is that neither Stanley nor Saul really wanted to sell Zabar\u2019s. Deep in his heart, perhaps even Klein couldn\u2019t bear to do it. Without it, what distinction would they have? As John Howard says, \u201cLiederman was the first person ever to attempt the hostile takeover of a private company.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that the \u201980s are gone, it may be too late to find an outside buyer willing to pay an acceptable price for Zabar\u2019s.<\/p>\n Despite their disagreements, all three maintain the same indifference to the great wealth that accumulates as Zabar\u2019s cash registers ring for them. Each still lives within a few blocks of Zabar\u2019s. Saul rode a secondhand bicycle to and from work until it was stolen from the sidewalk in front of the store \u2014 but only because he\u2019d refused to invest in a secure lock. Clothes mean little to the men. \u201cIn this family,\u201d says a family member, \u201cthe rule is, if you buy a sweater, put it under the bed for a year or two and kick it around before you wear it.\u201d<\/p>\n Continuity at Zabar\u2019s seemed assured ten years ago when David, a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, started working at the store\u2019s cheese counter. While one of his sisters became an art dealer and the other a doctor, he seemed most comfortable in a counterman\u2019s apron. Shy, good-natured, with tousled hair, he was easy to miss. But he did represent the family\u2019s future. Eight years ago, Saul took on his nephew as an apprentice in the fish and coffee business. \u201cIt was like learning the violin from the greatest master in the world,\u201d says Tracey Zabar. But great masters aren\u2019t known for being easy on their students. Last January, David took off his apron for the last time.<\/p>\n Photo: New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n \u201cMy husband was supposed to be 80 years old and die in the store,\u201d says Tracey. \u201cBut he was working so hard it looked like he\u2019d have a heart attack at 40.\u201d Long hours in the store wasn\u2019t the problem. Neither was working on all major holidays. What did grind David down was predawn calls and visits to the smoked-fish houses, which traditionally open at 4 a.m. He was working at least 60 hours a week. A more driven man might have kept it up. But not David.<\/p>\n \u201cI know a store on the East Side where the owners decided to stop working so hard,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of them was from the old school. He thought you had to do it. But once they worked a normal workweek, instead of killing themselves, they discovered the quality of their work improved.\u201d Saul Zabar is resolutely old school. He forced his nephew out rather than compromise over working hours. But he apparently thought better of it once David left. He wrote his nephew a letter asking him to come back \u2014 to no avail.<\/p>\n David Zabar left behind one revolutionary change \u2014 formerly impatient customers call it a stroke of genius \u2014 at Zabar\u2019s: five cold cases filled with prepackaged foods, prepared on the premises, for which customers once had no choice except to \u201ctake a number.\u201d To choose items at both the fish and meat counters, they had to take two numbers. On a Sunday morning, it was standard practice to read the Times while waiting \u2014 all of it. In a store where personal service counts, the change to prepackaged foods was momentous. \u201cWe did it because customers coming in at 6:45 on a weekday evening to pick up dinner have no time to wait \u2014 not if they want it on the table at 7:30,\u201d says David. \u201cBut if you have the time, the man will still cut lox for you just the way you like it.\u201d One-third of Zabar\u2019s fresh foods are now sold prepackaged.<\/p>\n All Zabar\u2019s top managers work grueling hours \u2014 60 a week is normal. They\u2019re paid well\u2014 six-figure salaries, profit sharing, and company cars. But there\u2019s little time to use them. Scott Goldshine, one of the three front-of-the-store managers, once took off on a Saturday to go to a wedding. Klein never let him forget it. \u201cMy own wedding will be in the store.\u201d says Goldshine. Steve Hart, the manager whose knowledge of the store is second only to Klein\u2019s, actually married a former Zabar\u2019s cashier.<\/p>\n Klein insists that employees show for work \u201cunless they\u2019re dead.\u201d But he doesn\u2019t call them at home. Saul does it regularly \u2014 at all hours. Tracey Zabar remembers getting an early-morning call from Saul at the store on a \u201cpriority only\u201d home phone line when she was in the late stages of a difficult pregnancy. \u201cThe potato salad,\u201d said Saul.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the potato salad?\u201d Tracey asked in a haze.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t taste right.\u201d<\/p>\n False alarm. Saul had tasted an experimental batch of potato salad whipped up by David. The regular stuff had been prepared in bulk.<\/p>\n No single item is more closely identified with Zabar\u2019s than smoked salmon. In a holiday the store can sell $300,000 worth. But surprisingly, it\u2019s not a profit center. Bought for $10.50 a pound, it\u2019s sliced to order at $19.95 per pound. But one-third is skin, bones, and end pieces. And the cutting, as David Zabar points out, is done \u201cby old-world labor paid for at very modern wages. Senior countermen make more than $60,000 per year. The result is little or no profit on hand-cut-salmon sales. Precut-and-prepackaged fish \u2014 now representing half of Zabar\u2019s sales does fetch a more normal profit margin.<\/p>\n Can one be too fanatic about quality? Tracey answers dryly, \u201cThis isn\u2019t brain surgery, it\u2019s fish.\u201d In Saul\u2019s hands, it may as well be brain surgery \u2014 or, the way his slender fingers knowingly dance over a fish, chiropractic. On a recent Thursday morning, he personally tasted through a $17,000 order of Pinneys Scottish smoked salmon. Tasting with him was the manufacturer\u2019s agent, Kim Bruhn. Saul prefers wild salmon to the aquafarmed variety for their intense flavor \u2014 and he prefers those caught on hook and line rather than netted. \u201cSometimes they thrash for a long time in the nets and lose their fat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Photo: New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n Poking, sniffing, munching, and spitting, Saul finds some of Bruhn\u2019s fish taste \u201cround and smooth,\u201d some fine in the middle of the side but too salty at each end, others \u201cat the edge of acceptability.\u201d Last to be tasted are large sides of salmon farmed in Scotland but smoked by another supplier, in London. They\u2019re known for fine smoking in London, says Bruhn. But not this time. Saul is displeased just from tapping his fingers along the skin side of the salmon. \u201cToo hard, too rubbery.\u201d He finds that the fish has been cut \u201csloppily.\u201d Worst of all, it tastes \u201craw, like sushi.\u201d<\/p>\n Eyes often roll at Saul\u2019s obsessiveness. This time, Bruhn is with him. She agrees to take back hundreds of dollars\u2019 worth of London smoked salmon without a murmur. Somebody will eat it, perhaps even praise it, but not customers of Zabar\u2019s.<\/p>\n Like true love, Murray Klein\u2019s anger at his partners does not fade with age. \u201cIf Saul Zabar walks in that door.\u201d said Klein one afternoon, \u201cI walk straight to the other side of the store.\u201d But he does it with a flourish. When Saul walks into the store the next morning. Klein abruptly stops adjusting a stack of electric juicers in the window.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going up to my office to read the Times,\u201d he says in a voice loud enough to get him a job in the legitimate theater.<\/p>\n \u201cAgain?\u201d asks a cashier. \u201cYou already read the Times this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n But Klein would rather read the Times twice than look at his partner once.<\/p>\n \u201cThey act like two children,\u201d mutters the cashier. But what\u2019s going on at Zabar\u2019s isn\u2019t child\u2019s play. As the partners feud and grow old, it\u2019s the store that may be the loser. Who will replace Klein? How will customers be assured of Olympian smoked-fish standards when Saul stops tasting? Can Zabar\u2019s still be the \u201cmost rambunctious and chaotic of all delicatessens\u201d? Not necessarily. And certainly not while the partners line up behind their lawyers.<\/p>\n Time grows short. Saul says. \u201cWe\u2019re all feeling the Grim Reaper breathing on us.\u201d If Zabar\u2019s ever becomes a shadow of itself, it will be like when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. The Upper West Side will be left with an ache that won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n One Great Story: A Nightly Newsletter for the Best of New York<\/p>\n The one story you shouldn\u2019t miss today, selected by\u00a0New York\u2019s editors.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![\"Seen](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/de5d946c78d6f4b2bcde117052a12e5b59-IMG-6374.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Photo: New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n
\u201c \u2018Fine. You can go right on charging $10,000 per year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1277c0f16ba7fc3e1536851ea529382e4e-IMG-6375.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4ef5fc1743c8341173f9ae2b5291b954c3-IMG-6376.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n