In a City With Halal Grocers and a 'Bangladesh Avenue,' a Polish Pastry Endures
Last edited Sun Apr 19, 2020, 10:06 AM - Edit history (1)
In a City With Halal Grocers and a ‘Bangladesh Avenue,’ a Polish Pastry Endures
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/paczki-day-fat-tuesday-facts-history.html
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Customers waited in line for Paczki outside of New Palace Bakery, a Polish bakery in Hamtramck, Mich., on Tuesday.CreditBrittany Greeson for The New York Times
By Mitch Smith
March 6, 2019
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — It was 5:45 a.m. and 10 degrees — before the sunrise, before the first call to prayer sounded from the city’s mosques — and already the Fat Tuesday line had spilled out the bakery’s doors, onto the street, past the pizzeria, around the corner.
The reward at the end of the frigid wait: a box of paczki (pronounced “PAWN-chkee”), the doughy Polish pastries filled with custard or fruit or, for the less tradition-bound, stuffed with Cocoa Puffs cereal.
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Hamtramck’s transformation in recent decades is well documented and obvious. Storefronts now display signs in Arabic or Bengali. A main road was given an honorary name, “Bangladesh Avenue.” And after the 2015 election, Hamtramck’s City Council became the country’s first with a Muslim majority, a milestone that drew unwanted media attention and critical social media posts from ex-residents who left decades ago.
Through all the change, Paczki Day has only grown in visibility, becoming an all-day event (one famous bakery opens at 3 a.m.) during which local businesses serve paczki burgers and liquor-infused “paczki bombs.” Even a Yemeni-owned halal grocery store, which was formerly a Polish market, sells the pastries.
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Customers cheered for Paczki at the New Martha Washington Bakery. Paczki Day has been a pre-Lent event in Hamtramck for generations.CreditBrittany Greeson for The New York Times
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We are better than we think sometimes.
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