So Long, Sammy Minzly

November 15, 2026

by the gentle author

Sammy Minzly, co-proprietor of Brick Lane Beigel Bakery, died on 23rd September aged ninety

Sammy Minzly – known affectionately in the neighbourhood as ‘Mr Sammy’ – was the presiding spirit of the most famous beigel bakery in the land, situated (as if you needed to be told) at the top of Brick Lane. Any visitor to London only has to ask a cab driver to take them to ‘the beigel shop’ and they will find themselves delivered to 159 Brick Lane, where the bakery is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – and everyone is welcome.

Once, I interrupted Mr Sammy here, just as he had finished shelling a hundred eggs, and we stood among the impressive steel machines for mixing up the dough to have a quick chat as the other bakers continued their work. While we were talking he began cutting beigel-sized pieces off a vast pile of dough. There is an inescapable sense of imperative here because as soon as one batch of beigels go on sale in the shop, another is going into the oven, and so it goes on for eternity. Mr Sammy made sure there were always enough fresh beigels and no-one was ever disappointed.

A dignified unassuming man with the eyes of a poet, Mr Sammy had been working there since 1976 and was one of the three joint proprietors of the shop with the two Cohen brothers, who took over from the Liebermans seventy years ago. All three were bakers and it was their conscientious approach and years of experience that account for the quality of the beigels that are unsurpassed on this side of the Atlantic. Mr Sammy was always around in the shop, even though technically he only worked two all-night shifts, Wednesday and Saturday.

‘We use the old system, boiling the beigels, before we bake them’ explained Mr Sammy pointing to a vat of cloudy hot water. It is this slower process that creates the distinctive chewiness, though few bakers do it anymore because they want to create their beigels fast. Mr Sammy used a recipe that his forefathers brought from Poland. But it was not simply a case of following the recipe, ‘it is how you work the recipe and how you treat the dough’ qualified Mr Sammy, revealing his professional baker’s sensibility.

When I ask him how he found the work, he halted and cast his eyes proudly around the crowds in the shop waiting for beigels, ‘It’s like a club for me, I see all kinds of nationalities here. It’s the hot spot!’ he declared. Then, as an example, he told me how the Japanese love his smoked salmon and cream cheese beigels, and followed this with the disclosure that the beigel shop is also a celebrity haunt – running his mind through the long roll call of glitterati that have eaten his beigels, he chose Henry Winkler, the Fonz, as his personal favourite.

A century ago, this was the Jewish neighbourhood and now the beigel shop is the only vestige of that entire world. But every beigel baked here by Mr Sammy served as a living reminder of the journey that so many thousands took from Poland (and all of Eastern Europe) to Brick Lane, and from here over successive generations out into the wider world.