STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A fatal marine explosion on May 22 sent plumes of black smoke across Staten Island. So I did a little wellness check on one of my favorite small businesses, L&B, a family-owned pierogi factory at 2960 Richmond Terr., almost right across the street from the fire.
I’m happy to report that Mira and Jerzy Bartosik are still plugging away in their shop. The red-on-white awning is just as clean as ever. Inside, you can escape the clamor of nearby shipyards and the bang and jangle of loose metal on a passing tractor-trailer. It’s a gritty scene out there—and all the more a miracle that the white stays so bright on their façade.
Come through the door and you’ll see that production keeps on trucking. It’s a tiny restaurant with a public space that doubles as a receiving area. Here, a handful of tables and Meet-the-Jetsons-like chairs are carved out from the bulk of the room — a working kitchen.
At the center, a stainless steel table serves as the literal springboard of the operation, where much of the knife and assembly work is done by Mira and Jerzy. Off to the side, a room that might once have been a closet now functions as a sausage-making nook, where meats are ground smooth for pierogi and more coarsely for stuffed cabbage, then tenderly worked and portioned into fillings.
But not every day is a pierogi-making day at L&B—an acronym for Luk and Bart, the Bartosiks’ sons. Some days Mira is producing soups for the week or caramelizing onions to a supple sweetness. Other days are devoted to golabki, a stuffed cabbage dish that is spectacular for the cabbage alone—poached until tender, full of water, so fresh even in its par-cooked state that it blooms with translucent leaves, crinkled with furrows and fat folds.
Handmade at scale for Staten Island and beyond
This week, the Bartosiks are in full swing as Polish festival season gets underway. They have operated the business for about two decades, and it stands as one of the few remaining food manufacturers in New York City still making products from scratch on-site.
Here, pierogi are handmade in varieties like potato and mushroom, sauerkraut and mushroom, cheese, and fruit-filled options like blueberry and strawberry. They’re fried to order and served with sauerkraut, sometimes onions and often kielbasa. Butter-fried chicken cutlets are shingled and kept crisp in the steam table.
If you’re bringing the dumplings home, take a tip from Mira: hard-fry the pierogi with a few pats of butter over high heat until browned and crisp. Keep them from touching while they cook…