David Kronstat, a second-generation American from an Eastern European family, remembers the five different kinds of lox his mom served at the dining table. The herring. The 12 different kinds of caviar. Fresh borscht. German and Polish meats and spreads.
“For me, it’s a trip back to Brooklyn,” said Kronstat, 58. “The foods of my childhood.”
His family, primarily of Ukranian, Russian and Polish descent, first settled in New York and kept their traditions alive. Kronstat later went to J.P. Taravella High School in Coral Springs and moved to the Hollywood area near Oakwood Plaza. He moved back to his Brooklyn hometown in 2005.
Now, with a family of his own and a home and brokerage business in Clifton, New Jersey, since 2008, the traditional tastes remain. For Kronstat, that means a trip to one of the two NetCost supermarkets in Jersey.
The chain of 13 grocery stores caters to a multi-ethnic populace but leans into its vast selection of Eastern European offerings such as Ukranian, Russian, Georgian, Belarusian, Slovenian, Moldovan and Uzbekistan.