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Light and Sweet

A slice of life at a Bronx cheesecake factory

by
Blake Eskin
May 30, 2006

The holiday of Shavuot marks the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. To celebrate, people stay up all night studying. They also eat dairy foods— milk, blintzes, and cheesecake, although nobody knows exactly why.

Fred Schuster opened S&S Cheesecake in 1962; he now has help from his son-in-law, Yair Ben-Zaken. Together, they supply steakhouses and gourmet shops around the country—Dean & Deluca, Morton’s, Smith & Wollensky. We took the subway up to 238th Street in the Bronx, to a windowless one-story brick building that houses the S&S bakery and store. If you want to follow our footsteps, get there early; the bakers go home by mid-afternoon.

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