Zabar's, it's almost a worldwide landmark. At this
point. We get tourists from all over the world
. Your store has a big emotional place in a
lot of people's hearts for a lot of people.
This is their daily grocery store. So it's Tuesday
at around nine o'clock. And every Tuesday we get
our coffee delivery which you can see over here we
sell aboutÂŁ8000 of coffee a week. That's between
mail order and retail. That's a lot of coffee
to sell for one store. Not a chain,
not a, this is just one location, one
store after the coffee is in around 10 o'clock,
Kenny who's the coffee manager and store manager along with
Annie Zabar, they cup the coffee. This is
the Tuesday morning ritual that's been going on probably longer
than I'm working here. She's breaking the coffee.
We're just checking out the smell of the coffee generally
. Um You can get a sense of anything's uh
problematic. This is what Saul Zabar used to do
every week for years and years and years. He's
95 so he's not doing that. Although there are
times he's here and he does help. But this
is the one, one thing that I can tell
you that happens every single Tuesday at the same time
at Zabar's is this one of the reasons people keep
coming back for everything as well as coffee is,
they know it's gonna taste the same every week.
It's just the way it is here. There's never
been, ever, ever. It doesn't matter if
it's Christmas Eve, it doesn't matter what's going on
that Tuesday it gets done no matter what. All
right, this is good. I'll let the guys
know downstairs. One of the first places I check
when I come here in the morning is the catering
department. There's usually a lot of catering orders in
the morning for breakfast orders and early lunch since catering
is also a big part of the business here and
most of these orders are expensive. I'm very involved
with the catering. I have great people. They're
all fantastic, but I still stick my nose in
a freak. Certainly because I don't like the phone
calls when there's a screw up. Saul Zabar has
always been the buyer of the fish, but we
have a fish buyer that he's trained for years whose
name is Tomas. He's Dominican, but he's buying
the smoked fish for the greatest Jewish smoked fish store
in the world. So this is Tomas from Zars
. He comes in every week and looks at the
whitefish and some of the other smoked fish goods that
we prepare for Zars and chooses the right mix of
products for his customers. So these whitefish have been
brined and which is a salt water solution. Now
, they are being hung up on these sticks,
which will be transferred on to the trolleys for smoking
. So once they're finished loading the fish onto the
trolleys, they'll get pushed into an oven. And
this is what the whitefish look like when they're finished
. Beautiful golden color. We pick the fish that
we want. Acne smokes it in a way that
we like it to be smoked. There's a,
there's a certain taste that Saul likes which Tomas obviously
knows. All right. So now these are the
jumbo whitefish that we have these. You wanna have
some fat in the back of the fish in the
belly, blue belly, the white feet too big
like that. Use it for the can, but
I have a medium white feet and use it for
the salad a little bit more flavor. I'm pay
809ÂŁ100 every week, regular time holiday, forget
about it. So now it's ready for me.
He market for Save us and tomorrow deliver it for
me. So Wednesday, he goes to the smokehouse
and he picks out the fish Thursday. The fish
comes in, in this area over here. All
of the fish salads are made in this part of
the kitchen right over here. How many years are
you here? Now? 34 Yuri's here. 34
years. He runs the, the fish salad department
. All the fish are appetizing related salads, whitefish
salad, tuna salad, egg salad, chicken salad
, et cetera has always been under the direction of
Saul's a bar. These are Saul's recipes that have
been 50 years old. Should be a little bit
chunky. Yeah. When the people eat, they
feel, you know, they feel fish. I
can break it a lot, you know. Should
be small chunky. Yeah, same recipe. Saul
still comes back here most days, every day.
He tastes little bit salty but good flavor. You
know, now it's done. I'm gonna send it
to the parking room. They put in the containers
and the salad up front. This is the white
beef on jury. This is how we do half
a pound after we pack it, we seal it
with the container. Then the final job is surprising
me all day. I bought chicken sala egg sala
cream sala crab meat sala, one of the busier
counters at Zabar's, especially during lunch. And certainly
on the weekend breakfast is our smoked fish department.
These guys are experts. They're the best slices in
the city. They slice paper thin. This is
Devin, one of the stars who, uh,
is charming, handsome and he knows how to slice
fish. What he's doing is an art form and
not everybody can do it. I can't do it
. You got a lot of people that are particular
. They want see-through slices thin, thin, thin
, they don't want small slices. Just depends.
Everyone is always to say, showing out for their
guests in the house. So they always want perfect
slices. It's kind of like a steak. If
you wind up cooking the steak too long, it's
rubbery. Right. If you cut it too thick
, it doesn't taste right. They want that thin
, thin slice that just melts in your mouth.
This counter has the longest wait time of any counter
. You can't slice faster than what they're doing.
If you want it to be paper thin, it's
all done by hand. You can see, it's
an, it's an odd form. So there are
people that get pissed because they have to wait too
long, but I can't rush them. Another big
part of our business is prepared foods. We have
a kitchen staff of 35 people. This whole crew
of guys has been over here 25 to 30 years
. Anthony makes the soup. How many years are
making the soup now? 2545 years, he's glued
to that kettle kitchens open seven days and the variety
of things and we could have 30 different soups out
in the refrigerator at any given time. But about
a year and a half ago, the chef came
up with an idea for roasted corn and tomato salad
, which is very simple. It's basically corn and
tomato, a couple of other things and it blew
up. He is making what's become one of the
more popular dishes here at jars, which is a
roast corn and tomato salad. Uh, how many
times a week do you do this? Now,
approximately, I'd say maybe 3 to 4 times a
week. We're already doing this salad. That's a
lot. He's preparing the corn on the cob.
They boil it, they char it. So I
use a little bit of vinegar pepper. Try not
to put too much. This is called Rappy Sugar
. He gets mad when he takes his sugar and
use it all up. That's what I do.
When he's not here. I take all his ingredients
. This is Rappy behind me one more just in
case. All right, when we finish the process
, we send the next door, they pack it
up and then it goes straight to the shelves,
straight to your home. Could be out of every
member of the staff. He talks more shit than
anybody, but I cant help and you can ask
these guys over here because they, I promise you
they're gonna guarantee it. I try to stay quiet
but it's so hard to do. Especially when Scott's
around me. I can't stay quiet. I have
to talk. No, I don't make fun of
him. He's my dad. I love him.
It's OK and I make fun of him. Thank
you. I love him. He's an asshole sometimes
. That's what I do. Listen, they're my
assholes. It's ok. They're all right. One
of the things that has always made Zabar Special are
the people that work here. This is really,
we call it the world's biggest mom and pop store
because we really are a family. This is Naomi
who's my assistant, who's been, who's been here
over 15 years. This is her sister over there
. Ashley, who's also been here a number of
years as well. The morning girls are the girls
that have been here forever. Rumor's been here over
20 years. This is Millie. In addition to
being one of my closest friends, she's been here
43 years, 230 people that work here. So
the Zabar family myself, you know, there's an
ob we feel there's an obligation. It's a lot
easier when you're working with people that care. So
you wanna do things, you wanna do things for
them, you know, they're gonna be there for
you. That's hugely important because the store doesn't run
without them. How old were you when you started
? 16? About? And I gotta tell you
from the first day that he started, he breaks
my balls and his balls. It's not break.
It's just, no, it's telling the truth.
He's a little guy for a little guy. He's
got a lot of this is true. He's one
angry little but he's small. I love him.
I love you too. We all spend more time
here than we do with our families. So it's
around 1130 in the morning. Now we come over
to the warehouse. This is our mail order warehouse
over here. SARS has a very large mail order
business. They run this whole operation over here and
during the holidays, this is a zoo. I
don't know how they do it. I check on
them. They don't need me to check on them
. Tripping nationwide. United States, Puerto Rico,
Hawaii, California. Anywhere I've seen p just go
to Montana. People love zars everywhere during the holidays
. All this is full of boxes and UPS is
nonstop. Just coming inside and out, filling up
a trailer outside. That's crazy. You do about
10,000 a day on a nice holiday. Monday night
. One of the things and one of the perks
of my job is I get the sample stuff right
now I have with me, Eric Newman. One
of the things I like doing I would rather do
is I get the sample food, which is always
fun. Eric is a longtime vendor of ours and
now we're gonna look at these pastrami egg rolls and
corned beef, egg rolls and assuming we like them
and the price is right. It will be,
then we'll sell them. We don't sell anything unless
it's tasted and it's got to pass our test.
Not bad. You have to understand. You never
tell a guy like this, that it's the greatest
thing you ever ate, but then he's gonna screw
you on the price. So you always kind of
beat me up a little bit. Good. It's
all right. You know, after he leaves,
he and I may talk and say this is the
best shit we ever ate, but never in front
of his face right away. Candido is the deli
manager. He's got better taste than I do.
I respect what he says sometimes more than what I
say. I may like something. He may pull
me aside and say it sucks. I let him
make the final decision when it comes to that.
It's amazing dealing with them because the money comes like
clockwork, which is awesome and there are just,
the numbers are always great. They just, the
volume of it is just tremendous, always big orders
. No, buts it. Uh there are some
, but I mean, we can be a pain
in the ass high standards, which is, uh
which is a good thing. I'm not a big
paperwork guy. I don't like it. It's very
important for me, which is one of the reasons
I'm here on the weekends is to be downstairs on
the floor when it's busy. Thank you so much
. You ready? How can I help you?
It doesn't matter what I'm, what else I'm doing
when it's busy, which is lunch time or dinner
time on the weekends. Then I'm downstairs, I'm
on the floor. It's important to be on the
floor to make sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to
. I'll be there to answer any problems. The
staff sees me there. There, you go love
. Have a good one. All right. She's
ok with the baby. I work with them pushing
baskets, throwing out the garbage. I learned that
from Mr Zabar always did that. Mr Klein used
to do that. We're a team, the game
. We cannot get tongue in Boston. Why doesn't
Boston have tongues? I have to come all the
way to New York to get tongues. Why I
come all the way from Boston to shop at bars
because we love the tongue. It's the best in
the world. Number one. And it's the best
whitefish salad better than in Boston. So we come
all the way to New York to shop at Zebu's
customers like this, that we're, that's why we're
still in business. There is definitely a pressure to
keep this place running for all of us. A
we all want a job b this is an institution
. I'm proud of what everybody's worked together and built
. It's very important to me that this continues as
well as the Zabar family wants it to continue.
And I feel the pressure every moment that I walk
in the store. Don't you love Zars? It's
the best. This store has meant so much to
so many people. I'm talking to people now that
I used to carry around, you know, when
they were two years old and go feed them food
sale. And it's like you remember me 30 years
ago, you used to drag me around the store
and, you know, feed me. That's cool
. And this store means a lot to a lot
of people. So I tried to keep it going --> .