Hani’s Bakery Opens in the East Village | Eater NY
"A crowd of pastry chefs, food writers and baking legend Rose Levy Berenbaum gathered for a friends-and-family opening at a former Dunkin Donuts at 67 Cooper Square and East Seventh Street (the plump D-shaped handle still on the door), where longtime Gramercy Tavern pastry chef Miro Uskokovic and his wife Shilpa Uskokovic have realized a long-held dream. The project reflects their backgrounds—Miro from Serbia, Shilpa from India—and Miro says, “The vision with the bakery is to continue that legacy and celebrate the diversity of American baking, [with] nods to who we are.” The shop leans decidedly American in its repertoire: chocolate-chunk cookies made with oat flour, which gives them a maltiness and a gooier center, weighing in at 160 grams each and “in the same weight class as the Levain Bakery cookies, but more spread out” (“We wanted to make it the size of a baby’s head,” Miro jokes); a chocolate-tuxedo cake inspired by the one at Costco; and a PB-and-J–inspired cake with blueberry compote and a peanut‑butter butter‑cream (a cake sharp-eyed devotees may recognize from Miro’s time at Untitled). They expect to offer roughly 30–35 rotating items day to day, including broccoli-cheddar sausage scones that seem to have “a crush on biscuits,” maple custard tarts with flaky fluted shells and an impossibly smooth filling, rugelach filled with plum butter (lekvar), Vojka’s sour cherry cake in summer, slices of vanilla custard called kremšnita (Shilpa jokes that it is a “delicious little diva, and in accordance with her spirit, shall only make an occasional appearance, staying for an hour or so each time she shows up”), and “Rose’s lemon loaf cake,” an homage tied to the vintage Hobart mixer gifted by Levy Berenbaum. The team hopes to be known for a honey cake, a version of the Russian medovik developed by Shilpa and heavily inspired by Michelle Polzine’s cake at the now-shuttered 20th Century Cafe in San Francisco; the dessert also connects to Miro’s childhood memory of buying a weekly slice for his mother from a state-owned bakery across the street. Sandwich offerings are expected to debut soon (a BEC with spicy cilantro sauce and a dilly tuna salad are likely), the beverage program highlights teas from In Pursuit of Tea alongside a masala chai developed by Shilpa with her parents—“Half of the business is owned by an Indian woman, so we’ve got to have a good masala chai on the menu,” Miro declares—and coffee comes from Brooklyn’s Superlost. With petite wooden booths and a long counter with stools the space invites lingering, pop-ups and special events, and the opening carries deep personal meaning: “When everything kind of politically wrapped up, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer and unfortunately passed away,” Miro shares about his mother Vojka, whose thwarted bakery plans in the Balkans this project fulfills, and “For someone like me to come where I come from, and to be in Manhattan opening a bakery in [my mother’s] name, is quite significant honestly.” Opened with friends-and-family previews and set to operate from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m." - Devra Ferst
