A strude awakening in Stamford Hill

Thursday is strudel day at Sharon’s bakery. Photo: © Tanja Schimpl

I am not sure if it is just a hypoglycaemic hallucination, but all of a sudden I find myself smack dab in the middle of the Habsburg Empire.

I am marching alongside Joseph Roth through the set of a period film, let’s say Sonnenschein, and all of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s characters are there. There’s Shmendrik, who insists I accompany him to Chelm, and there’s Schlemiel, who wants to drag me to Warsaw but I ignore them both and go instead with Zaynul and his wife Zeitel, who will stop at nothing to get some strudel (which is the only good thing that came out of the Habsburg Empire).

In this dreamlike mental state I set out for Stamford Hill, where I sniff around the bakeries until I find something sweet with apples. I wind up at Sharon’s Bakery. After a few trips to the shop I happen to meet the manager, Shuki Moses, who shattered all of my Habsburg dreams in an instant. I wanted to hear about an age-old family recipe that had been handed down from generation to generation. I wanted to hear about the painstaking process that takes days of labour and heavy concentration to get the dough just right. What I got was: “We have six branches.” Apparently Sharon’s is all over the place and they produce different baked goods in different locations.

Mr Moses told me the history of the shop. Aden, which used to be a British colony in Yemen, had a substantial Jewish population for centuries. Now there are no Jews in Aden, most of them having been evacuated to Israel, the US and even Britain.

Shuki’s parents came to Britain and opened a grocery store. They ran that store for 43 years, closing it just five years ago. It used to be next to where Sharon’s is now. During that time the family gradually moved into the baking sector and expanded the business. They now have shops in Manor House, Golders Green, Hendon, Edgware, and Barkingside. They maintain the highest level of kashrut (there are four in all) while preparing their foods and a rabbi comes to control them at least 10 times a day.

Why should this be important to you? Because only about 15 per cent of Kosher food is bought for religious reasons. Many people equate Kosher with “food purity” and Sharon’s cheesecake is gluten free. In New York, many people eat kosher because it fits with their lifestyle; it has even become trendy in some areas. One wonders if that could happen in Hackney.

Regardless of this, I have to admit that after one bite of Sharon’s strudel (available only on Thursdays), I step out of my haze and back into reality. Mixing cultures is like shuffling a deck of cards; you never know what hand you’ll get. So I take my kosher strudel, make myself a Turkish coffee (in my favourite džezva), scoop on some Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and watch the World Cup. I cut into my strudel Roald Dahl-style with my Knork and close my eyes. The Habsburgs got something right.