"If you hate chocolate, don't get Cheskie's babka. It's veined with it to the max. A whole one is a mighty hefty brick. Even a half, which we brought to the nearby espresso shop, was more than enough to make breakfast for two."
Michael Stern
"Gooey, sticky, moist, sweet and immensely satisfying, these fruit and poppy-seed ruggelah are one of coffee's great companions."
Michael Stern
"Of the many kinds of ruggelah Cheskie's makes, we like cinnamon the best."
Michael Stern
"Cheskie's bakery is indeed heimishe, which is a hard-to-translate Yiddish word that means friendly, kind and accommodating. "
Michael Stern
"A doppio – double-shot of espresso – at Cafe Olimpico was just the right beverage to accompany the chocolate babka we brought from Cheskie's."
Michael Stern
"The barristas at Olimpico around the corner from Cheskie's are masters of their art. It is a morning's entertainment to sip espressos at the counter and watch them work."
Michael Stern
"A neighborhood coffee house in its fourth decade, Olimpico has regulars we saw every morning we stopped in for a full week."
Michael Stern
The ultimate babka used to be our Holy Grail. Every one was dry or drippy, too chocolaty or not chocolaty enough, oversweet or underweight, excessively cakelike or a dolled-up loaf of bread. Then we went to Cheskie Heimishe Bakery in the old Jewish neighborhood of Montreal, known as Mile End, and found what we had been looking for.
