Michaeli Bakery

Babka is the reason to arrive early

Chocolate babka is the item Michaeli Bakery is built on: enriched dough laid with chocolate, twisted, and baked until the exposed edges turn dark against a soft crumb. The almond croissant is the other sweet worth the walk, closer to a French pastry case than the rest of the range. Burekas cover the savory side, flaky pastry wrapped around a hot filling and sold from the same window as the cakes, and they are the thing to order when the box is turning too sweet. The shape of the shop is Israeli patisserie rather than bread bakery, so cookies, cheesecakes and cream cakes sit alongside the pastries, and nothing is made to sit for two days; the case is built on the assumption that most of it leaves within hours.

Adir Michaeli’s route from Tel Aviv

Adir Michaeli ran the pastry department at Lehamim in Tel Aviv before moving to New York City in 2013 to open Breads Bakery, where his chocolate babka first drew national attention. He left in 2016 to work for himself, and his own bakery opened on Division Street on the Lower East Side in 2019 as a small, Israeli-style patisserie, a room with only a handful of seats, and further counters have followed elsewhere in Manhattan. The kitchens are certified kosher, and the baking keeps to the Jewish calendar. What carried over from Tel Aviv is a preference for enriched dough and lamination handled by hand, which is why the babka and the croissant are the two things most people are queuing for.

How to order

Take the chocolate babka first and eat it the same day, while the edges are still crisp and the chocolate has not set hard. Add the almond croissant if the order needs a second sweet, since it shows the lamination side of the kitchen more clearly than the babka does. Then pick up a bureka to balance the box, because the savory pastry is what stops the whole visit from turning into dessert. Cheesecakes and cream cakes are the order when there is a table waiting rather than a walk ahead. Buying for a group is easier with a whole babka than with slices, since the crumb towards the middle stays softer that way.