Saul Zabar, the principal owner of Zabar’s, the iconic Jewish food emporium on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has died at age 97.

His daughter Anne said the cause of death was a brain bleed, according to The New York Times.

For more than half a century, Zabar ran the abundant grocery on Broadway, selling a smorgasbord of Ashkenazi delicacies, from smoked fish and stacks of cheeses to bagels, rugelach and babka. It offers special menus for holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

Zabar, who was born in 1928, had not intended to take the helm of the store founded by his parents, but abandoned his plan to become a doctor in 1950 when his father died and returned to run the grocery. From that year on, he expanded the business along with his brother Stanley.

He was known for his exacting standards when it came to selecting fish, and his office once doubled as a tasting room for coffee. In one instance, according to an account in the Times, he stomped on a slab of whitefish that he deemed to be of an insufficiently high standard.

Each week, the store sold approximately 2,000 pounds of smoked fish and........

© The Times of Israel