Saul Zabar, Zabar’s Co‑Owner, Dies at 97

Saul Zabar, who transformed his family’s smoked‑fish counter into the world‑famous Zabar’s market on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, died on Oct. 7, 2025, in Manhattan at 97 after being hospitalized with a brain bleed, his daughter said. He took over the business after his father’s death in 1950 and for more than seven decades built Zabar’s into a roughly 20,000‑square‑foot, family‑run institution on Broadway at 80th Street, famed for smoked fish, coffee, cheese, babka and cookware. Known for exacting standards—personally tasting fish and launching the store’s coffee business—and for public disputes such as a 1983 “caviar war” and a lobster/crawfish labeling controversy, he became a defining New York character. He ran the store alongside his brother Stanley and partners over the years and is survived by his wife, Carole Ann Kishner, and children including Ann and Rachel, with two children still working at Zabar’s. Mayor Eric Adams praised Zabar’s as “a slice of NYC soul,” underscoring the market’s cultural importance.