Kibbitz & Nosh-Marcia Halperin

Photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin documented the waning years of New York City’s predominantly Jewish self-service dining establishments. Between 1975 and 1985 she photographed Horn & Hardart automats and Dubrow’s, a popular family-owned chain of self-service restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn that closed its doors in 1985. Her work sheds light on the sense of community that Dubrow’s Cafeteria offered to an aging and assimilating Jewish population, still cognizant of their families’ immigration from European shtetls at the turn of the 20th century yet striving to fit into contemporary American society. It was not unusual for Dubrow’s elder clientele (which included ex-vaudeville performers and prize fighters, taxi drivers, bookies, and Holocaust survivors) to table hop to gossip and dine—‘kibbitz & nosh’—on gefilte fish, kasha varnishkes, or blintzes.

Marcia Bricker Halperin, a lifelong Brooklynite, has been photographing the character and landscape of New York City since the 1970s. Her photography has been shown in many group exhibitions, including at the Brooklyn Museum and the International Center of Photography and is represented in a number of collections. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, NY.  Her first book, Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria is available for pre-order from Cornell University Press or your favorite bookseller.

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