NYC EATS

 “A candy store minus an egg cream was as difficult to conceive of as the Earth without gravity.” - Elliot Willensky

So who’s the genius who invented the egg cream? There are several contenders, but the likeliest hero is a small, dapper man named Louis Auster who arrived in New York City in 1890. Founder of a great candy store dynasty, Auster is not only credited with creating the popular drink, but also making “the Lafite Rothschild of egg creams.”

Always dressed to the nines in a white shirt and suit with a diamond stick-pin, Louis opened his first candy store on the corner of Stanton and Clinton Streets in the mostly-Jewish Lower East Side. Small stores with soda fountains selling penny candies and “2-cent plain” seltzers were extremely popular in the impoverished neighborhood; there were 73 of them within its 1/3 square mile area. Louis sired six sons, and wanted each to have their own store. Auster established other candy stores on 3rd Street and Avenue D, and opened his most popular location on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street, in the heart of the “Yiddish Rialto”.

The story goes that Louis wasn’t happy with the sodas he was selling, and wanted to offer something new. There was a lot of competition between soda fountains in that era, each trying to attract new customers by concocting enticing drinks like “Kola Phosphates”, “Fuzzy Flips” and the popular “Lime Rickeys.” Louis started experimenting by mixing water, cocoa, sugar and other ingredients, until he brewed a unique, rich chocolate syrup. It was this syrup which insured Louis Auster’s legendary status. When mixed with seltzer and milk, he knew he had a winner.

He began making batches of his secret syrup in a sealed-off room in the rear of his store. All the windows were painted over to prevent spies from stealing his formula. Competitors tried to scrape the paint off, or watch what ingredients were delivered to the store, in order to figure out the confidential recipe. They never did. It’s still a secret.

The syrup had to be prepared correctly to achieve a flavorsome, bittersweet cocoa flavor. The results did not last long before they degraded, so new batches had to be cooked up every few days, several times a day during the summer. Each store went through over 50 quarts of chocolate syrup daily.

Louis’s new “egg cream” was a huge success. People liked to think there was egg and cream in it, even though there wasn’t, because it represented something desirable and expensive. Soon Louis was selling over 3,000 egg creams a day at each of his locations, even more at his 2nd Avenue shop, which expanded to include a 250-seat ice cream parlor. This store, surrounded by crowded theaters and bustling restaurants, became Auster’s most popular establishment. And like all of his stores, egg creams represented over 90 per cent of his business.

Louis’s egg creams were always made in special, chilled glasses, never in paper cups. He kept all his ingredients ice-cold. Rather than using pre-made seltzer like many other soda fountains did, he employed seltzer-making machines called “carbonators,” which achieved the liveliest fizz. Everything was kept frigid, fresh and sparkling, which made for the best results. 

Heated debates developed among egg cream “experts”about which Auster store, and which Auster counterman, made the best version. Discussion groups would form outside each shop, including one gang that required drinking 10 egg creams in 30 minutes to join! Bugsy Siegel and other members of the notorious “Jewish mafia,” surrounded by bodyguards, would show up for the chocolatey refreshment. People came from miles around to savor the famous Auster treat. “It seemed preposterous that people would travel so far for a drink, but the egg cream was tantalizing. It was like Marijuana. They needed it,” Louis’s grandson Stanley recounts in Jeff Kisseloff’s wistful oral history book, You Must Remember This.

Stanley worked at his grandfather’s candy store from age five through college. He recalls the special day when he was taught how to make the secret chocolate syrup and the egg cream. “It was like my bar mitzvah: today I am a man.” He also remembers when the giant restaurant chain Schrafft’s offered to buy the egg cream formula for an astonishing amount of money, but his grandfather refused to sell. 

Louis Auster died in 1955 at age 97. By that time, the Jewish theaters, restaurants and shops were all closing down, and their customers were moving to the suburbs. People didn’t seem to be interested in candy stores and egg creams anymore. 

But something more had disappeared. “The egg cream is not only a great drink, but it’s associated with a certain camaraderie or folksiness among people,” Stanley says. Having an egg cream while sitting by yourself misses the point. “It’s having an egg cream with a group of people, while talking about various things. People usually drank it while standing and kibitzing, and those days are long gone.”

But are they? Recently egg creams are making a comeback, especially at trendy restaurants, nouveau soda fountains and contemporary kosher eateries. You can still get a very good New York egg cream, if you know where to look. You can even concoct a serviceable one yourself! To find out more, read the Egg Cream story here.

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