My grandfather, Harry Stern, who was German, was a tenor with La Scala. His stage name was Enrico Sterlio and his best friend was Enrico Caruso, who I thought from the sound of his name must really be Harry Caray. My grandparents were so anxious to assimilate that my mother wasn’t taught a word of German, but she made things up from what she overheard. Things like, “In my whole leibkuchen, I never heard of such a thing,” thinking leibkuchen was the German word for life. It was in the Delicatessen Meyer in Lincoln Square last Christmas that I found out something my mother never knew. Life is a coffee cake.
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At the corner of Lincoln and Leland is Enisa’s European Pastry Shop & Cafe, an old-world frilly-pink candy box of a place with dainty tables and chairs and a menu that runs to the traditional four esses: sandwiches, salads, sodas, and sundaes. This is a favorite spot of sturdy burghers who like to devour coffees and pastries long on the shlagsahne (whipped cream).
There are even a couple of boxes of toys for restless kids–kids who have the kind of yuppie daddies who buy them off with the expensive bakery cookies ($7.50 a pound) so they can read the Wall Street Journal in peace. One child, celebrating a birthday, was presented with an entire strawberry roulade, sponge cake rolled around strawberries and whipped cream, custom-baked and decorated for her and her jaded little friends.
Cafe Selmarie also serves Starbucks coffees. So many people have become hooked on Starbucks that I wonder if it, like the original Coca-Cola, which contained cocaine, has something addictive in it other than caffeine.
