Tuesday, November 5th 2024   |

Despite threats, NOLA American Bakery celebrates 2nd anniversary

By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN

Two days before the official anniversary of her NOLA American Bakery, native New Orleanian Talya Rasner was caught up in the maelstrom of Operation Protective Edge’s ground assault in Gaza like all other residents of Tel Aviv.

NOLA American Bakery owner Talya Rasner with some of her special baked goods. (Photo by Alan Smason)

NOLA American Bakery owner Talya Rasner with some of her special baked goods. (Photo by Alan Smason)

The dual citizen of Israel and the U.S. had expected to celebrate with a possible sale for her loyal customers or some other measure to mark the milestone event for the business. It wouldn’t be anything too exciting. Instead, she and her employees found more excitement than they had dreamed for themselves as they scrambled for protective shelter beneath the upstairs stairwell as sirens wailed of incoming missiles from terrorists overhead.

The product designer turned bakery and café owner was born with a sister and brother in New Orleans to parents Kathy Leon Rasner and Israeli Kobi Rasner before the family made aliyah to Israel. But those formative years spent in New Orleans are still special to her. She still thinks about her maternal grandmother Nathalie Goldman – affectionately known as “Grandma Nat” – whose recipes and love of baking inspired the young Rasner to take the bold step of opening this new enterprise, an American-style bakery and cafe replete with dishes like Mississippi Mud pie, pecan pie and a roast beef New Orleans poor boy.

“I liked to bake,” she admits. And the recipes she turned to were from her mother’s  American cookbooks and those she remembered from her “remarkably strong and adaptive” grandmother. “Most of the bakeries in Israel are European bakeries,” she points out. “Yeasty cakes are really popular here and all of these American baked goods don’t exist here.”

NOLA American Bakery

Located in downtown Tel Aviv, the NOLA American Bakery is an homage to owner Talya Rasner’s hometown of New Orleans, LA. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Before she opened her store, Rasner, who had studied product design in Milan, was at an emotional and career crossroads. She had studied for an entire year and was working as a designer, being well paid for her efforts. But she was bored and restless. “The whole design (thing) wasn’t what I was attracted to,” she continues. To relieve her boredom and stress associated with sitting behind a computer and sketching all day, she started baking cupcakes. She couldn’t eat them all, so she gave extras to friends and family and received many compliments.

Rasner recalls the encouragement became a gratification for her, but she kept hearing from those who had sampled her wares that she should open up a place to sell them. “‘You should open an American bakery,'” Rasner remembers them emboldening her.

It opened up a new era of possibilities and the designer began to form in her mind what and how a new American-style bakery would look like. The first thing she knew was that no matter how hard she tried, cupcakes alone would not be the item that could make for a successful business plan.

American baked goods are different from what Israelis are used to, she explains. “There are muffins in Israel, but I don’t think they’re muffins. It’s a cake that’s baked in a muffin tin, but it’s not the same consistency and it’s not the same flavor.”

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Native New Orleanians (from left) Kathy Leon Rasner, bakery owner Talya Rasner, and Israeli father Kobi Rasner, whom Cathy met at Zionist camp as a youth. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Her concept of an American bakery would rely not just on cupcakes, but brownies, blondies, chocolate squares and lemon bars to start.

Israeli culture is not imbued with a concept of a dessert restaurant. Rasner says they just don’t go to a place to have desserts. “Israelis don’t do that,” she cautions.

So she began to expand her vision from a simple bakery to a café. “I wanted it to be a place like a café where you could sit down,” she continues.  She hired consultants to flesh out her concept and vision. They urged her to add a food menu to the bakery concept.

“‘Okay, but if I’m having a menu, it has to be an American menu,'” she shot back. “‘I’m not losing my concept.'” That’s when the idea of a poor boy being added to the menu seemed right.

Her father was called in for support, both spiritually and financially and the project, which his daughter had hoped would only take a few months, began to linger for more than a year and a half. City officials balked at some of the proposals initially for the site she found , but Rasner stood firm, designing her NOLA (short for New Orleans, Louisiana) American Bakery with a kitchen and several tables both inside the site she found in downtown Tel Aviv as well along the sidewalk.

“I wanted it to be in the center of the city,” Rasner elaborates. “I knew I didn’t want it to be in a mall or an open-air mall.”

Knowing that Israelis also favor fresh salads, Rasner added a caesar salad, spinach salad and an American salad to the menu and insisted that the kitchen turn out American style breakfasts too.

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Grandma Nat’s recipe for sherry poppy seed cakes is a standard at NOLA American Bakery along with brownies, blondies and lemon squares. (Photo by Alan Smason)

When she finally opened the bakery and café in July of 2012, she had a mile of publicity. Rasner placed photos of her Grandma Nat on the wall and used her image on her business cards to give a genuine New Orleans feel to the eatery. An article in Haaretz, the popular Jewish newspaper website, spoke glowingly of her baked goods as well as of Harriet “Hat” Sternstein, a celebrated baker who had joined with Rasner in her business.

Sternstein had established the first dog bakery in Paris some years before, but had recently closed it and moved to Tel Aviv. The two were introduced by a mutual friend and the shidduch took.

With Hat’s experience as a baker, Rasner’s business acumen and a staff she hired including a sister, NOLA American Bakery has seen steady business since it opened its doors. “Every Friday and Saturday there’s a line,” Rasner beams, noting they close on Friday evenings in honor of Shabbat.

The conflict in Gaza and the closure this week of Ben Gurion Airport has had a definite effect on tourism in general and the number of customers she’s seen, Rasner notes.

“Most of our customers are like most Tel Avivians, I think, living their life pretty much as usual,” she states. “We’re doing OK. This is, however, usually the high season of the year and since there are less tourists, and people aren’t in the mood to go out and are going out less, sales are obviously not as high as last year.”

Rasner hopes the situation will reverse itself when the fighting is over and the population can stop fearing missile attacks or the possibility of losing loved ones called up to fight in the conflict. “Most people are obviously concerned about the situation, and now also for the soldiers in Gaza. Most people know at least someone that’s in Gaza or waiting to be called up,” she says.

Soon, she hopes the situation will be better and she can once again welcome her many customers, who are now relishing her “crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside” wares including some special treats like Grandma Nat’s sherry poppyseed cakes.

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