Cheskie bakery's Mile End location has changed. Its 'phenomenal' babka has not

Cheskie may have moved, but the babka is still the best in the city. Montreal’s premier kosher bakery packed up its pastries and reopened across the street midway through 2025, leading some to worry that the little shop beloved by Jews and gentiles alike could cease to be Mile End’s best-kept secret.

After 23 years tucked into a hole-in-the-wall space on Bernard St. W., just west of Parc Ave., owners Cheskie and Malky Lebowitz have shifted their business to the south side of Bernard, just east of Parc. The sparkling new locale is more than twice the size, with automatic doors and a large window front that draws lines of tourists on Sundays.

“It’s crazy,” said employee Maria Fernanda, serving customers with a smile. Word of the bakery’s famous babka and other delicacies has spread on social media, making it an essential stop on any self-respecting tour of Mile End.

Despite the sophistication of the new location, “I miss the older one,” Fernanda admitted. “It was cosy, but change is good.”

The neighbourhood’s large Hasidic Jewish population flocks to Cheskie on Fridays to stock up on challah before the Sabbath. The rest of the time, the bakery’s clientele is a melting pot reflective of the neighbourhood.

“He treats everyone the same; it doesn’t matter if they’re Jewish or not,” Malky said of her husband. “He’s nice to everyone.”

She grew up in Outremont; Cheskie grew up in New York. They married in 1989 and he moved here.

“In (the Hasidic) community, the husband comes to the wife,” Malky said.

Their pastry shop was still more than a decade away. Cheskie spent years waking up at 4 a.m. to do deliveries for a Montreal wholesale bakery. The rest of the time, “he studied Torah; he loves to study,” Malky said.

Cheskie comes from a family of bakers. His late uncle owned a bakery, Cheskie’s younger brother Shloimy has two bakeries and their four sisters all have bakeries. It was Shloimy who pushed Cheskie to open a bakery of his own.

“My husband’s younger brother opened a bakery in New York and it was doing very well, so he told my husband to open one in Montreal,” Malky recalled.

“My husband was like, ‘No, I don’t think so; in Montreal, the community is quite small.’”

But his brother insisted, and Cheskie finally relented. He and Malky travelled to New York for a few weeks to learn his brother’s recipes, some of them passed down for generations. Now, the student may have outdone the master.

“The recipes are the same, but — don’t write this in the paper — (our pastries are) better than New York,” Malky said. “I think it’s the flour and water and a lot of ingredients we get from here. The taste is different.

“People try to copy our stuff and they just can’t do it. But it’s also my husband — he babies all the recipes.”

Cheskie runs the kitchen, while Malky handles front-of-house, accounting and staffing.

“We’re a husband-and-wife team,” she said.

They opened in March 2002, when Malky was nine months pregnant with their fifth daughter; they also have two boys. Cheskie made just two or three things in those early days.

“Rugelach was the first item we did,” Malky said. “Then we made brownie cake and started slowly making rolls and sandwiches. Everything took time.”

Cheskie now bakes more products than Malky can count. As she guided me along the display counters, she listed items in the dairy section including mini-cheese crowns (“the most popular thing here”), dairy muffins, cheese danishes, cream cakes, cheese muffins and butter cakes; plus the vast non-dairy section, including regular and Russian babka, doughnuts (“super delicious and before Hanukkah, they’re the bestseller here”), hamantaschen, various other danishes (chocolate, vanilla, nuts and jam), an assortment of cookies (many covered in sprinkles), challah and rye breads, potato knishes and a new feature: bagels.

Malky swears they’re not looking to compete with nearby institutions St-Viateur and Fairmount Bagel. “We just needed them because people wanted them,” she said, adding that regulars request them for their sandwiches.

Esther Rimokh, from Manhattan, drops by Cheskie when in town visiting her mother.

“People in the States talk about their babka, especially the Russian babka,” she said. “It’s very unique: the dough, the chocolate flavouring, the frosting. It’s just fresh. It’s phenomenal.”

Pressed to reveal his secret, Cheskie hesitated.

“There’s no secret,” he said, to which Malky interjected: “It’s love.”

Arthur Steckler travels crosstown from Hampstead once or twice a week for his Cheskie fix.

“It’s one of the best bakeries in Montreal,” he said, leaving with bags full of “all kinds of cakes” and doughnuts. “Not only in Montreal, even the States. When I go there, everyone asks me to bring them things. The quality is much better. His chocolate is 10 times better than any other place.”

Rita Fuchs was stocking up on babka, cookies and challah, among other things, with bags for both herself and a Côte-St-Luc neighbour.

“Everything is good,” she said. “Everything’s delicious. Everything they make here is unbelievable. And the staff is so friendly; they’re like family.”

The word “family” came up repeatedly during The Gazette’s visit. Under Cheskie’s name on the awning and front window are two other telling words: “heimishe bakery,” or homey bakery.

“The girls that work for me are like family,” Malky said, walking through the vast kitchen spread over two floors where a team of mostly female, Latin-American employees prepared treats. “If my daughter gets married, they all come to the wedding.”

Cheskie has more than 20 employees. The bakery is open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., except on Sundays, when it opens at 8 a.m., and on Fridays, when it closes at 3 p.m. It is closed on Saturdays.

“I like the dynamic here,” said Vanessa, a Cheskie employee of 12 years. “You move. You don’t stay at one station.”

Joseph, originally from Burkina Faso, oversees the ovens on the main floor. He enjoys “the ambience, the way of working. It’s like a family.”

Malky’s husband keeps everything extremely clean, she emphasizes. “He’s like OCD, but thank God not in the house. In the house he lets me do my own thing.”

He also insists on keeping prices low.

“We need to raise our prices,” she said. “But Cheskie is giving me a hard time. He doesn’t care to make a lot of money. He’s a very simple guy, and he doesn’t want it to be too expensive. We’re the cheapest bakery in Montreal.

“People come and they can’t believe how cheap my stuff is — the rugelach are 50 cents. You can’t get anything for 50 cents. Even my babka, I didn’t raise my price in years.”

“I’m not a money guy,” Cheskie explained. “I’m trying to be a good, honest guy and be nice to everybody. I’m trying to make things to be good, and then people are happy. It’s nothing deep. That’s what I’m doing every day.”

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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