Behind him are racks of trays fresh from the back bake shop - Danish twists, still glossy from the oven, and butter cakes, still runny before they've set up, and formidable tea biscuits, and too-warm-to-slice-at-first Jewish rye.
But mostly - and this is what Lipkin's Bakery is known for - there are the knishes (yes, you pronounce the "k"), about 2,000 baked daily - full-size round ones, unlike the blockier fellas from New York, and the big-selling minis, the size of mildly flattened pool balls.
They are part dumpling, part turnover, the Yiddish-Eastern European equivalent of the Venezuelan empanada, the Indian samosa, the Italian calzone. And given their humble origins, it is no surprise that it is the potato with grated onion that remains the favored rendition. (Though a pizza variety has joined the best-sellers, along with a moist kasha one, a nice spinach one that's best eaten warm, a mock liver, a rice, a cheese, and in season, a pumpkin.)
This is one of the last - Lipkin suspects it is the last - of the knisheries in the city.
And it is for these staples of Jewish knoshery that they traipse in (not only from Rhawnhurst, but from Richboro, too, and Rittenhouse Square and Allentown, even) to Lipkin's, "Home of Mitch's Delicious Knishes." In the case of the older set, they may drop in daily. More weight-conscious, though no less culturally tethered, younger customers may show up weekly to stock after-services Sabbath trays or, on occasion, holiday platters.
So an air of crisis and anxiety swept through the community and beyond in April when - while Lipkin's was closed for Passover - a television monitor overheated, lit some decorations, and sent flames shooting into the ceiling, shutting the bakery down. It was a day, as Lipkin put it last week, "that will live infamy."
