Eli’s Table Review: Taking Clichés and Making Them Delicious

They make good butter in Normandy, so the butter in front of you is from Normandy. Soft and shiny, it’s spread out on the plate so you can drag a bunch of halved raw radishes right through, picking up as much as possible before popping these into your mouth. The thick, crusty bread, however, has not traveled far. It is made just next door, at the kosher bakery.

That’s because the Eli of Eli’s Table on New York's Upper East Side is Eli Zabar, son of Louis Zabar, who founded the New York institution Zabar’s on the Upper West Side. Eli Zabar left his family’s business in the early 1970s and spent decades building his own empire across Central Park. Now he runs a set of shops, restaurants, and wine bars that stretches all the way to Amagansett, Long Island, where he owns a suitably posh and summery farm stand.