Rating: 
Summary: onions, poppy seeds, and pogroms
Review: "Forget the milk and honey. Just take me to your bialys," food writer Mimi Sheraton imagines herself saying when she arrives in Israel. Her assignment: to write about food and restaurants for a travel magazine. Her secret mission: to continue her research on the onion roll commonly known as the bialy. Israel is only one of many stops on Sheraton's journey to discover the truth about bialys -- the real recipe, the orginal way of eating it.In page-turningly graceful prose, Sheraton tracks the social history of the bialy (kuchen in Yiddish). Sheraton's first stop is Bialystok, Poland, the birthplace of bialys. Her obsessive search for bakers and ingredients adds humor to the horror of a place infamous for being the only town in the world to have pogroms after the Holocaust. "I felt as though I had just been in a surreal dream, wandering in a strange gray city, cold and wet and clutching an onion roll that no one recognized," Sheraton says with mock-seriousness. An underground network of bialy contacts leads Sheraton to Jewish communities around the world. She meets the famous lawyer Samuel Pisar, who dreamed of bialys from his shelf in Auschwitz. She also meets the man who invented bialys, and others who simply ate bialys -- "Rich Jews ate kuchen with meals, and for poor Jews kuchen were the meal." Each has a story to tell -- the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto, torture by the Russians, the struggles of settlers in Palestine -- all of it refracted through memories of freshly baked kuchen. Through Sheraton's sleuthing we discover that cheese, butter, and especially halvah (sesame seed snacks) garnished the original bialy -- which was packed with poppy seeds and embossed with slivers of fresh, roasted onions. We also learn about the bizarre ritual sacrifice of unbaked dough at Kossar's bialy joint in New York. If that isn't enough, you also get the recipe. Diane Mehta
Rating: 
Summary: Intermittantly interesting, but ill-digested
Review: "Forget the milk and honey. Just take me to your bialys," food writer Mimi Sheraton imagines herself saying when she arrives in Israel. Her assignment: to write about food and restaurants for a travel magazine. Her secret mission: to continue her research on the onion roll commonly known as the bialy. Israel is only one of many stops on Sheraton's journey to discover the truth about bialys -- the real recipe, the orginal way of eating it. In page-turningly graceful prose, Sheraton tracks the social history of the bialy (kuchen in Yiddish). Sheraton's first stop is Bialystok, Poland, the birthplace of bialys. Her obsessive search for bakers and ingredients adds humor to the horror of a place infamous for being the only town in the world to have pogroms after the Holocaust. "I felt as though I had just been in a surreal dream, wandering in a strange gray city, cold and wet and clutching an onion roll that no one recognized," Sheraton says with mock-seriousness. An underground network of bialy contacts leads Sheraton to Jewish communities around the world. She meets the famous lawyer Samuel Pisar, who dreamed of bialys from his shelf in Auschwitz. She also meets the man who invented bialys, and others who simply ate bialys -- "Rich Jews ate kuchen with meals, and for poor Jews kuchen were the meal." Each has a story to tell -- the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto, torture by the Russians, the struggles of settlers in Palestine -- all of it refracted through memories of freshly baked kuchen. Through Sheraton's sleuthing we discover that cheese, butter, and especially halvah (sesame seed snacks) garnished the original bialy -- which was packed with poppy seeds and embossed with slivers of fresh, roasted onions. We also learn about the bizarre ritual sacrifice of unbaked dough at Kossar's bialy joint in New York. If that isn't enough, you also get the recipe. Diane Mehta
Rating: 
Summary: for bialy mavens, as food and culture
Review: A fascinating book. If you love bialys, you'll love this book. Includes a recipe for this treat.
Rating:
Summary: More than a book about bread!
Review: As a child when I asked my Grandfather where the family was from - he told me a town called Bialystock. When I asked him where it was he told me "well sometimes it was in Poland, othertimes it was in Russia." Before reading this book I knew there was some sort of connection between the Bialy and that town, and this book opened some doors for me. Mimi Sheraton has opened a time machine, sparked by her curiosity about a humble breakfast treat. By starting out with a simple question about a roll, she goes on a quest and opens a the lost world of pre-Holocaust Poland in the process. Her book takes you to every corner of the world (Poland, France, Israel, Texas, Austalia and of course NYC) in search of a lost world. This is more than abook about bread, and perhaps one of the best history books I have recently - and a great exploration of what it means to be Jewish, and in a bigger sense explores what it means to be human. While it's a short book (I read it in one night) Mimi packs in the details. When you are done reading it you wish you were taking notes. This book would make a great gift, and is worth sharing with your friends and family.
Rating:
Summary: Blends a culinary expose with a travel memoir
Review: Bialys are bread rolls with toasted onion centers: her passion for these rolls led the author to the Polish town of Bailystok, where she investigated the origins of the Jewish staple and those who invented it. Bialy Eaters blends a culinary expose with a travel memoir and will prove of particular interest to Jewish food fans.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely and unusual work of nonfiction.
Review: I grew up on Grand Street near Kossar's bialy bakery, and Ms. Sheraton comes close to making me taste those delicious breads once again. Her language is descriptive about food in much the same way that a good novelist makes you see something common differently through deft imagery. Unless you are a major nitpicker, you'll enjoy this gentle, respectful, and fun book. And if you haven't tasted a genuine bialy, on your next trip to NYC please do take a sidetrip to Grand and Essex and pick up a bag--onion, not garlic, for reasons the author addresses--fresh and warm out of the oven. In a world of mass-produced blandness, I can see why Ms. Sheraton wrote this book, seeking the secret behind something unique.
Rating:
Summary: My mouth is watering....
Review: If you've ever eaten a bialy you'll appreciate the efforts of Mimi Sheraton. I envy her journey to all parts of the world in search of the origins of the bialy. She was quite successful and is able to share her findings in a most descriptive way. I was totally in sync with her, every step of the way. If you don't know what a bialy is, this book will entice you to find one to try...but heed her advise and seek the authentic bialy baker. My mouth is watering, just thinking about it.
Rating:
Summary: Chewy
Review: Mimi Sheraton was fascinated by French Toast in Paris, Turkish Delight in Istanbul, Danish pastry in Copenhagen, Scotch Salmon in Glasgow, and Parma Ham in Parma. So why not hunt for the elusive Bialy in Bialystok? I am a Kossar's Bialy (Grand Street at Essex in NYC) afficionado, so I approached this book with a chip on my shoulder. But Mimi knows her stuff. She even studied the art of bialy making at Kossar's (she includes a Kossar based recipe in the book). Mimi Sheraton (formerly with The New York Times) took off on an adventure to Bialystok (which was once the home of 50,000 Jews), packing some bialys (bailystoker kuchen) for the trip with her husband, Dick Falcone. Her COBD, or Compulsive Obsessive Bialy Disorder, originated after a 1992 sidetrip from her Conde Nast Traveler assignment on Polish foods. After placing an ad seeking stories in the Bialystok Shtimme Yiddish newspaper, she sorts through the stories, and then visits Israel, Australia, Argentina, Paris, Lincolnwood, Scottsdale (jalapeno flavored), and NYC's Lower East Side over seven years, and creates this history (herstory) of the bialy and the community that is now lost. By the way, did you know that Bell Bialy of Canarsie Brooklyn ships 96,000 bagels and bialies to Japan's Hokushin Corp. each month (where they sell for over $1.10 each)? Or that bialy's should never be sliced like a bagel? Or that Jews created a settlement in Bialystok officially in 1558 and were granted citizenship in 1745. This is a fun read. Now if someone would just tell me the difference between those who say kugel and those who say kiegel.
Rating:
Summary: Not By Bialies Alone
Review: Mimi Sheraton's work about a special bread and the people who made it echoes her subject matter. The Bialy eaters is itself moist, crusty, sensual, and characterized by a depressed hole in its centers. The hole is not due to any shoddiness in Ms. Sheraton's craft; it is the loss of some 60,000 beautiful soles and their rich culture that is the underpainting of her fine portrait of a special bread. Her doomed but dogged pilgrimage back to Bialystok, the source of the Bialy, is commendable for its integrity. Reading true, it involves a tale sadly too familiar for many of her readers, myself included. But it was her descriptions of bialies and pletzels, which I remember from my childhood in Baltimore, still warm from the baker's oven, that were the source of my lost night's sleep. I salivated and ruminated over the tastes and smells of my past. Sheraton shows shows how food is more than calories and carbs and taste and smell; it is also culture and history, art and, at its very best, a poetic expression of love. I can't wait to try the recipe.
Rating:
Summary: Not By Bialies Alone
Review: Mimi Sheraton's work about a special bread and the people who made it echoes her subject matter. The Bialy eaters is itself moist, crusty, sensual, and characterized by a depressed hole in its centers. The hole is not due to any shoddiness in Ms. Sheraton's craft; it is the loss of some 60,000 beautiful soles and their rich culture that is the underpainting of her fine portrait of a special bread. Her doomed but dogged pilgrimage back to Bialystok, the source of the Bialy, is commendable for its integrity. Reading true, it involves a tale sadly too familiar for many of her readers, myself included. But it was her descriptions of bialies and pletzels, which I remember from my childhood in Baltimore, still warm from the baker's oven, that were the source of my lost night's sleep. I salivated and ruminated over the tastes and smells of my past. Sheraton shows shows how food is more than calories and carbs and taste and smell; it is also culture and history, art and, at its very best, a poetic expression of love. I can't wait to try the recipe.
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