Kolache Mama Come To NY and Serves Up Knish-Type Pastry

If you want to eat Eastern European but are sick of the same old knishes and bagels, then chase down the kolache, a new nosh just now hitting New York.

What’s a Kolache you ask? The kolache [pronounced kuh‐LA‐chee
] is a type of sweet yeast-risen fresh-baked dough filled with savory ingredients like spinach and feta, or sweet fillings like lemon curd.

The people at Kolache Mama, who have just opened their first store at 45 E. 45th Street, will tell you it’s the new bagel.It also looks a bit like an open-face knish, which isn’t all that surprising given its Eastern European origins.

So how do these new snacks, priced at an affordable $2.99, taste? Would you be tempted to trade a slice of pizza, not to mention a bagel, for a kolache? With tasty fillings like spinach and feta and tomato and mozzarella, the round pastries make for a relatively healthful and filling snack. As for the bread casing, it boasts the heft of a hamburger roll and the mildly sweet taste and texture of a slice of Pepperidge Farm white bread.

Maybe that familiar white bread taste and feel is why folks from America’s heartland—from Minnesota to Texas—crave the pastry. So popular is the kolache in the nation’s mid-section that Prague, Oklahoma; Caldwell, Texas; and East Bernard, Texas hold annual kolache festivals.

Kolache Mama will offer 25 varieties, including a  a “Combo Nosh” with hummus, tabbouleh, tzatziki and sirachi sauce and sweet offerings made with ingredients like apples and chocolate ganache.

Kolache Moma plans to open additional outlets in New York soon.

If you try one one of these pastries, let me know how you like it.

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2. New York Pastry Shop on Upper East Side May Close
3. Upper West Side Chocolatier Jacques Torres in Kings of Pastry at Film Forum