Moishe’s is an old school bakery in the East Village that has been producing and selling kosher baked goods since 1978. The bakery purveys a wide range of homemade baked goods, from black and white cookies to generous slices of babka. I will warn you, however, that this bakery uses nuts, such as walnuts, in some baked goods, so ask first if you have allergies.

The bakery does lack some energy in the atmosphere and looks rather bleak on the inside. This lack of ambiance shouldn’t be a serious problem, because you don’t pay too much attention to that kind of thing when you’re stuffing a pastry into your face. Once you taste that first bite of apple strudel, you get instantly hooked. The pastry is flakey, delicate, crusted with sugar, and the apple filling is the stuff of dreams. The filling tastes like the inside of an apple pie with a slightly more powerful taste of apples.

Another favorite pastry of mine from Moishe ’s is the hamantash. Although you can find these at fairway, Moishe’s hamantash is superior in every way. You can select from a variety of fillings, including raspberry, chocolate, apricot or poppy butter. The best part about these hamantashen is that the jam is much more natural than that of others. Another positive is that the dough of the hamantash is sweet enough to be tasty sans jam but isn’t overpowered by sweetness when combined with jam.

I also tasted the bow tie pastry. Even though you would expect this kind of treat at an Italian bakery, they are just as good if not better at Moishe’. The texture is crispy crunchy goodness with the same sugar crust as the strudel. Moishe’s has a wonderful window display that exhibits their vast selection of baked goods.

The location is cash only and strictly kosher.  Being kosher, they aren’t open on Saturday and hey close earlier than their standard time of 9 pm on Fridays, when they close a 7 pm. In short, Moishe’s is the place to go for a fresh baked kosher pastry. Even though the pastries are sometimes a little stale, I have never hesitated to gobble up whatever the shop purveys. Finally, (on account of the staleness of the bowtie pastry) I would rate this 8/10.