Beigel Bake, Brick Lane

Beigel Bake, located at 159 Brick Lane in London, is a 24-hour bakery founded in 1974 by Asher Cohen and his brothers. Five bakers work overnight to produce 2,000 to 3,000 beigels daily using traditional wet wooden planks called Shebas. The shop is famous for its cured salt beef brisket, which stews for five hours before being sliced into beigels with mustard and gherkin.

London · from the walk “Walls That Talk: Shoreditch Street Art & Urban Creativity” · Generated

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Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane, London E1 6SB

How long is the salt beef brisket stewed at Beigel Bake on Brick Lane?

Take a breath. You can smell it, can't you? That warm, yeasty perfume drifting out of a tiny white shopfront... Welcome to Beigel Bake, one hundred and fifty-nine Brick Lane. And it is, quite possibly, the most democratic institution in all of London.

This twenty-four-hour bakery was founded in nineteen seventy-four right here in Spitalfields. But the story behind it... is a proper East End family drama. A man named Asher Cohen, a carpenter by trade, came over from Israel in the nineteen sixties to help his brother, Jonny Cohen, who was already working in London's baking scene. Jonny had opened three bakeries across the city, including one right here on Brick Lane — just a few doors down, in fact, in the yellow-fronted building you can still see today. Asher started renting Jonny's shop during the week and built up his own wholesale business. But he did a little Too well... and Jonny got envious and wanted the shop back. So what did Asher do? He bought the old butcher's shop next door and established Beigel Bake with his two other brothers. And That is the origin of London's most famous bakery rivalry — the white one versus the yellow one, separated by just four doors.

Now, here's something most visitors miss. The word beigel entered English from Yiddish, and may stem from the German word Beugel, meaning stirrup, because of the similarity in shape. And if you want to sound like a local, say Bye-gul... not Bay-gul. Get that wrong and the ladies behind the counter Will give you a look.

Between six PM and one AM, five bakers work tirelessly to produce two to three Thousand beigels every single day. They're boiled, baked, cooled, sliced, and filled — and this is the crucial part — they're arranged onto narrow wet wooden planks called Shebas. Wood instead of metal, so the bakers don't burn their hands. It's the Same technique Jewish bakers brought here over a hundred years ago.

And that history matters. Between eighteen eighty and nineteen fourteen, more than two and a half million Ashkenazi Jews fled Eastern Europe to escape persecution. The East End blossomed into a vibrant centre of Yiddish culture, with streets alive with salt beef sandwiches, Latkes, and challah. London was home to at least sixty Jewish master bakers, many operating right here.

But here's what makes Brick Lane truly extraordinary as a piece of living art. The building at fifty-nine Brick Lane has been home to a succession of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities since the mid eighteenth century, reflecting the waves of immigration in Spitalfields. High above its entrances, a stone sundial is carved with the Latin words Umbra Sumus — "We are shadows." What better motto for a street where every generation leaves its mark... and then makes room for the next?

Beigel Bake counts Madonna and certain members of the royal family among its clientele. And the musician Questlove from The Roots once said that the late Amy Winehouse herself used to bring him here, calling it... magic.

So if you're going to get one thing... get the salt beef beigel with mustard and gherkin. That cured beef brisket stews for Five hours before being sliced into your beigel. It is, without exaggeration, a bite of East End history. Just like the murals on these walls, this little bakery is art... the edible kind.

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