Lunch From Lipkin’s


Speaking of baked goods…

Remember a couple weeks ago when I ruined the day of every dieter in the city by publishing photos from our office-wide Best of Philly donut taste test? Yeah, that was fun, wasn’t it?

So here’s another excuse to lick the screen–a massive delivery of lunch time awesomeness from Lipkin & Sons Bakery which arrived just an hour ago and filled half of a good-sized conference table with fresh-baked joy. Did the good folks from Lipkin’s drop all this off purely out of the goodness of their hearts? Probably not. Like all those donut shops (and several sandwich places, and a couple bars…), they’d probably heard that we’re in the run-up to this year’s Best of Philly issue and wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be overlooked. Apparently, when you’re a bakery, the best thinking on how to accomplish that is to simply flood the office with pound cake, bobka, knishes, baby danishes and loaves of black pumpernickel bread and hope for the best.

Not a bad plan, really…

Anyway, what Lipkin’s delivered was a massive assortment of all their best stuff: potato knishes wearing little onion crowns, slices of all-butter pound cake sweet as love and dense as a new sponge, tiny danishes criss-crossed with icing and bleeding sugar syrup like a wound. There were egg-washed rolls begging to be made into massive sandwiches (too bad I wasn’t carrying a pound of salami with me–something I keep telling myself I should do every day, just in case), more knishes filled with spinach, with kasha, with rice sweetened with cinnamon  and sugar (which was strange, but not altogether as gross as it sounds), and ruglach filled with chocolate. The cinnamon rolls as wide as my thumb were dangerous–I could’ve eaten a dozen of them had there been a dozen there to eat–but the pumpernickel loaf was a bit of a disappointment: it wasn’t sour enough for me, or sweet enough, or as dark-of-heart as I prefer. Pity.

Still, helluva way to make a living, right? Though honestly, what I could use right now is someone to deliver a big-ass salad (like the size of a small kiddie pool) and a personal trainer who’ll chase me around the office, menacing me with a head of broccoli, until I burn off some of Lipkin’s pound cake.

But before that, I need to hear from you folks. Lipkin & Sons (which is over at 8013 Castor Avenue for those of you currently gnawing on your monitors) made a strong showing, to be sure, but is there some bakery in your ‘hood that we absolutely should not miss? Some crazy, wild-eyed baker who makes breads you’d kill for? Some shop which, for a hundred years, has been making the greatest butter cake or challah or cannoli known to man? Shout it out, folks. Now’s your chance.

Oh, and the first one of you who names a cupcake shop? You’re dead to me. Making cupcakes does not make you a baker any more than reheating a can of Beefaroni makes you a chef, so don’t go getting any ideas.