B&H Dairy Isn't Sure It'll Make It Through The Winter

In a year full of impossible demands exerted on New York City’s wounded restaurant industry, it’s been a particularly unlucky winter for B&H Dairy. Over the last few months alone, the much-loved East Village kosher vegetarian diner has endured a stolen cash register, broken windows, unexpected electrical expenses, and a powerful storm that wrecked their (latest) outdoor umbrella.

The onslaught took a biblical turn earlier this month, when a fire devastated the historic Middle Collegiate Church across 2nd Avenue, dredging up painful memories of the block’s 2015 fatal gas explosion. The church fire closed B&H for the weekend and forced them to trash a day’s supply of fresh borscht and matzo ball soup — a minor expense, in the grand scheme of things, but one with awful timing. A week later, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered indoor dining shut down in New York City.

But the greatest indignity of all, according to co-owner Ola Abdelwahed, came not from fires or storms or plagues, but from local officials. Thanks to the city and state’s ever-shifting set of outdoor dining regulations, the restaurant owners have now spent several months and tens of thousands of dollars jumping through bureaucratic hoops, with no end in sight.

The final straw came a few days before Christmas, when city inspectors ordered B&H to dismantle their newly-erected sidewalk structure, due to its proximity to a curbside tree. (The bus lane on 2nd Avenue means B&H can’t take advantage of on-street dining). By that point, they’d already relocated the outdoor area twice to meet the city’s demands, while investing thousands of dollars in new wiring that will, in theory, eventually allow them to connect an outdoor heater.

“When the man stopped by and told me about the tree, I almost had a heart attack. No one ever mentioned the tree, all of a sudden they remember the tree,” Ola told Gothamist on a recent morning. “I give this place so much heart and emotion to continue the tradition, and the city wants to destroy us.”

As they seek help from the city’s small business resources, the stress has taken a toll on Ola, who said she’s had demoralizing conversations with her husband about having to close the restaurant if things don’t turn around soon. “The money is like ice,” she said, “it just melts.”

The co-owner recently recorded a tearful video detailing the dire circumstances, which a longtime customer added to a GoFundMe campaign. “God help us,” she wrote on Facebook. A few days later, a gust of wind blew the restaurant’s awning into its outdoor dining tent, toppling their new umbrella.

Opened in 1937, B&H is the last of the dairy restaurants that once blanketed 2nd Avenue, serving kosher Eastern European comfort food to the neighborhood’s working class Jewish residents.

Since 2004, the shop has been run by Ola and her husband, Fawzy Abdelwahed. Ola, a 44-year-old native of Inowrocław, Poland with a penchant for bright pink eyeliner, is the first to admit that they are unlikely stewards of this narrow, historic lunch counter.

“I am Polish Christian, my husband is Muslim, and we run kosher place,” Ola says, laughing. “The guy who works nights is from Egypt. Leo is from Puebla. The kitchen is Polish. A lot of the clientele is Jewish.”

And yet, the menu has remained largely fixed in time: fluffy challah, cheese blintzes, buttery latkes and gooey tuna melts, served alongside homemade soups, ladled into large buckets by a meticulous Polish woman. It’s the sort of place where it’s nearly impossible to spend more than $10, or to leave remotely hungry. “We try to keep it good quality but good money,” Ola explains.

Several employees have been there for more than two decades, and can be found behind the counter razzing the parade of regulars ("Nice haircut, did you do cut it yourself?"). Leo, who shares a name with another locally-famed B&H counterman, leads the pack, at 30 years.

The restaurant has managed to avoid lay-offs thus far, thanks to a federal loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, but that money has nearly run out. The exorbitant delivery fees collected by Grubhub, Seamless and other third-party apps have essentially wiped out the profits on deliveries, according to Ola.

Still, like the owners before them, the workers at B&H have a reputation for doling out free soup to customers going through a hard time. There are old ladies in the neighborhood, Ola says, who would eat only bread without their interventions. “We ask them how they feel, what they need. It’s kind of like a bar.”

Lately, those customers have said they are fearful of losing yet another iconic East Village business. Richard Lloyd Giddens Jr., a one-time bassist for STOMP, recalled weekly brunches at B&H between shows.

“B&H was a staple for so many of us for so many different reasons,” he told Gothamist. “We can’t lose another institution like that in the East Village.”

Many of the local customers have rallied around B&H in recent months, as they did in the weeks following the gas explosion five years ago, and at the start of the pandemic. The most recent fundraiser, which will go toward rent and utilities, has collected more than $50,000.

The outpouring of support has kept the owners going. But Ola admits that the last few months have left her closer to giving up than she ever thought possible. She plans to reassess in the new year whether there is a viable future for the 83-year-old lunch counter.

“It was my dream to come to America and it became true. It’s not like I’m angry,” she told Gothamist. “My tongue is very strong, But I don’t have available words to explain the emotion.”