Remember the Epicure market? A look at what lured shoppers to the Miami Beach landmark

What drew shoppers to the Epicure market?

The store-made mushroom-and-barley soup sold in a plain jar with a gold label? The chocolate mousse cake gleaming from the bakery display? The prime cuts of beef or the prepared hot food like stuffed cabbage? The produce section where a bow-tied employee weighed your picks and sealed your plastic bag?

It’s hard to describe Epicure. And even though the last of the locations closed in 2017, you can see its influence at Publix, Whole Foods and other markets.

Epicure, which attracted movie stars, mobsters, and just regular folks, opened in the mid-1940s in Miami Beach, expanding across a city block on Alton Road with a market and kitchen. Smaller versions of the market, called Hostess Pantry, also opened on 41st Street in mid-Beach and on Harding Avenue in Surfside. A larger market, like the original location, opened in Sunny Isles Beach in the building that once house the Rascal House deli, and later in Coral Gables.

Let’s go through the Miami Herald archives to remember the Epicure market.

Epicure’s success built on family

Published March 12, 1995

By Grace Lim

Shortly after World War II, the Thal family opened Epicure Market, sticking to a belief that people would pay top dollar for top-quality food and service.

That simple philosophy toward their business has never wavered, even after five decades.

Over the years, the gourmet food store has grown from a 2,000-square-foot market to a 35,000-square-foot Miami Beach institution at 1656 Alton Rd. Plans are under way to add another 10,000 square feet by the fall of 1996.

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Co-owner Harry Thal, 58, remembers Epicure’s humble beginnings. His uncle, Epicure founder Edward Thal, and Harry’s father, Leonard Thal, operated the store with a total of 10 employees. Young Harry Thal was recruited to help out.

“At 8 or 9, I already had a knife in my hand and I could clean the insides of a chicken, take the legs off,” he said.

“There was no air conditioning. It had an open front, a garage door that rolled up. The produce department had no refrigeration. Everything in the produce stand had to be iced every hour.”

In the early years, business was seasonal. It came and went with the snowbirds and tourists.

“Six, seven months, eight months a year, you could roll a bowling ball down the store and never hit a customer,” Harry Thal said.

Try the bowling ball trick now and havoc would result. More than 1,000 customers a day patronize the store, which has 150 employees. In addition to its full line of prime meats and produce, the store has added cheeses, frozen foods, baked goods, wines and flowers.

The market offers a 300-item menu each week and features takeout meals prepared fresh throughout the day.

Quality service and food are what bring longtime customer Jill Adler to Epicure.

“Everything is fresh. The service is great,” said Adler, who has shopped there for 14 years. “It’s a nice old-time neighborhood store that’s a little bit more. It’s an epicurean delight.”

Ten days ago, Harry Thal was mildly chastised by patron Ernestine Levinson, an Epicure patron of 35 years. She wanted to know why the last loaf of challach bread she had purchased had holes in it.

Harry Thal promised her that he would take care of the problem.

Reassured, Levinson then spouted praise upon praise for Epicure. “I shopped in Epicure when they were on Godfrey Road, when they were in Surfside,” said Levinson, who is in her late 80s. “Now I live in this area, I shop here.”

For years, the Thal family has turned down offers to be bought out, to go public or to franchise. The family’s experience with expansion proved that Epicure wasn’t cut out to be duplicated.

Epicure’s Hostess Pantry in Surfside opened in 1961 and closed in 1991. Another satellite store opened in 1965 on 41st Street (Arthur Godfrey Road) and closed in 1985.

“We found when we closed the other two down, the quality in this store went way up,” said co-owner Mitchell Thal, grandson of founder Edward Thal.

“We had many offers to open stores all over town, all over the country, but it’s almost impossible for us to do that and maintain the quality standards we have set for ourselves,” Mitchell Thal said.

“We would rather stay small and be able to sleep at night knowing that we’re doing the right thing for our customers than to strike it rich quick and know eventually it won’t work.”

Like Harry Thal, Mitchell Thal, 40, learned about the family business as a young boy.

“When I was 5 years old, they used to sit me in a shopping cart and give me a stamper and I would stamp the groceries. I made bakery boxes. I was a bag boy, floor sweeper, pot washer,” Mitchell Thal said. “And I worked my way up.”

Although the changing of the guard to the younger Thals from the elder Thals took place officially two years ago, original owners Edward and Leonard Thal are still involved with the business.

“They are consultants,” Harry Thal said with a grin. “They tell us what to do and how to do it.”

Edward Thal, 86, still visits the store every day. He has watched his business change and grow along with the community.

When Epicure first opened, the most popular homemade soup was matzoh ball; rye bread was the top-selling bread. Now Epicure’s longtime favorites have been replaced with minestrone and French bread.

Edward Thal knows how important the personal touch is to good business. As a policy, he and the other Thals sample each food item before it is presented to the public. “If it is not good enough for me, it certainly is not good enough for our customers,” he said.

After a recent taste test, Edward Thal came back with favorable reports on frankfurters, pork chops, brownies and the asparagus soup.

“I also had that Spanish dessert, I don’t know even know the name of it,” Edward Thal said.

“Tres leches. Three milks,” his grandson said.

Mitchell and Harry Thal waited for Epicure’s founder to give thumbs up or down to the sweet treat.

Smiles broke out when Edward Thal said: “That was very good, too.”

READ MORE: Publix, Walmart, Winn-Dixie, Aldi, Costco. Which grocer sees the most Florida shoppers?

EPICURE TRIVIA

Here are some interesting facts about Epicure Market, 1656 Alton Rd.:

- More than 1,000 customers a day patronize the store.

- Edward Thal’s original store, which opened in 1945, had just under 2,000 square feet. The store will expand from its current 35,000 square feet to 45,000 square feet and include a coffee and wine bar late next year.

- More than 50 percent of its business comes from buyers of prepared meals.

- Up to 150 pounds of fresh seafood are cooked daily.

- 137 quarts of minestrone soup are sold a day.

- 411 loaves of French bread are sold a day.

Market boasts a star-filled past

Published Sept. 16, 1990

By Aaron S. Rubin

When retired baseball star Babe Ruth needed steaks for a barbecue, he knew where to turn: Miami Beach’s Epicure Market.

So did John F. Kennedy, who once had dinner delivered to the presidential yacht, moored off Miami Beach.

And rock star Bruce Springsteen, in the midst of a national tour, didn’t hesitate to spend more than $13,000 for bountiful helpings of beef, lobster and crab from the Miami Beach institution at 1656 Alton Rd.

As Epicure Market enters its 45th year, the grocery’s cast of customers reads like a Who’s Who of Miami Beach pioneers and a compendium of some of America’s most famous personalities and infamous ruffians.

Entertainer Jackie Gleason favored chicken-in-the-pot and sandwiches to take the edge off rehearsals. Film comedian Walter Matthau leaned toward deli fare. Mob kingpin Meyer Lansky indulged in a hearty veal meal in the kitchen -- so his wife couldn’t see him stray from his diet.

When America returned to a peacetime economy after World War II ended in 1945, Edward Thal, a restaurateur and would-be barman, converted the former Army kitchen into the Epicure Market. The store took its name from top-of-the-line S.S. Pierce foodstuffs and was the most recent of several markets dating to 1926, Thal said.

Originally from Philadelphia, Thal used his Northern connections to stock meat and butter in a time of postwar scarcity, continuing the store’s tradition of supplying select merchandise and catering to the Beach’s upper crust.

The market grew, expanding to 41st Street (from 1965 to 1985) and 9417 Harding Ave. in Surfside, and Thal’s brothers and relatives joined in the effort. The store remains family-run, although its 140 employees have expanded outside the Thal clan.

Over the years, the Epicureans claimed a variety of Miami Beach firsts, Thal said: bringing in fresh fruit from California, stocking fresh turkeys for holidays and making deliveries from an air-conditioned truck.

“As the times have changed and the city has changed, we have changed too,” said Harry Thal, Edward Thal’s nephew and manager of Epicure’s kitchen and baking facilities.

In recent years, Epicure has gone beyond a full line of prime meats and produce to emphasize prepared meals, expanding into a variety of ethnic delicacies, holiday fare and custom cooking.

The market offers a 200-item menu each week, Harry Thal said, and features foods prepared fresh throughout the day. Prepared foods make up more than 50 percent of Epicure’s sales, said Mitchell Thal, Edward’s grandson and manager of the store’s retail operations.

The items - priced at $5 or $6 per meal - are popular because people don’t have time or skill to prepare many dishes, Mitchell Thal said.

A 24-hour phone recording details menu offerings.

Also popular are gift baskets filled with delicacies, modern adaptations of the steamer baskets that once were given to friends or relatives before they set off on an ocean voyage, Edward Thal said.

Mitchell Thal said one such basket led to one of his most thrilling encounters.

He sent a basket to an ex-baseball star who was undergoing a heart operation at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Several days later, a man came to the store and said the former New York Yankee wanted to thank him for the basket, Thal said.

“I turned around and there was Joe DiMaggio. My knees went weak,” he said. “It’s something I’ll never forget.”

Closing of a South Beach landmark

Published Sept. 16, 2017

By Carlos Frías

Epicure Gourmet Market & Cafe, a South Beach institution dating to 1945, has closed for good.

The market posted the news on Twitter, and owner Jason Starkman confirmed he would close it amid a confluence of events, from losing all their perishables after the hurricane to years of down sales and a rash of interest from real estate developers who want to sublease.

“It’s prime real estate,” Starkman said of the Alton Road site. “The business itself doesn’t make sense to run. It’s just not making money.”

Starkman said sales have been slumping in the last five to seven years after his family bought the market in 1998. He pointed to the yearlong closure of Alton Road and the downturn of the economy in 2008. Plus, the market now has competition from two nearby Publix stores, a Fresh Market and a Whole Foods Market. The Whole Foods will expand, and a Trader Joe’s is planned nearby.

“It ran its course,” Starkman said.

The late Eddie Thal founded the market at 1656 Alton Road with brother Leonard in 1945 after taking over a butcher shop the Army Air Corps had commandeered during World War II. Epicure became a hit with locals and the famous, simply by making family-friendly prepared food and flying in specialty items from every state.

At its height, the restaurant was cooking 10,000 gallons of chicken soup a week, preparing 100,000 pieces of gefilte fish, butchering 40,000 pounds of meat and making more than 60 kinds of prepared foods for those too lazy or too unwilling to cook - or simply for those who knew their fettuccine with ham salad, tuna salad or potato latkes would never measure up. They had a deft touch for all manners of cuisine, from arroz con pollo to Irish stew, and they were renowned for their Black-Out Cake (dark chocolate cake, filled with dark chocolate pudding, frosted with dark chocolate and dusted with cocoa).

When South Beach was still a sleepy town, before the ‘90s boom, Epicure was the one place welcoming the cosmopolitan. There, you could buy imported Champagne and Beluga caviar, fresh turkeys from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, maple syrup from Vermont, fresh chanterelles from North Dakota and a black walnut cake from South Carolina. The products came at a premium customers were happy to pay.

“I figured let the big guys corner the prices and I’ll corner the quality,” Eddie Thal told the Miami Herald in 1983.

Celebrities who came to town genuflected at its door, particularly because Thal would send a gift basket to their hotel rooms with a gift card they could use only there.

Mobster Meyer Lansky ate his stuffed veal in the back room in secret from his wife, who had him on a strict diet. President Harry Truman had them send barbecued ribs to him in Key West. Jimmy Hoffa came for the potato kugel. Winston Churchill kept coming back for the roast beef when he visited shortly after World War II - he had gone without beef for so long.

They closed the store for Michael Jackson, Pavarotti and Joe DiMaggio to shop. But Oprah Winfrey just shopped among others, recalls Eddie’s grandson, Mitchell, who worked at the store for 30 years and is now retired in Wellington.

“You’ve got a real nice place here,” Paul Newman told Eddie Thal once, after crossing the street while filming “Absence of Malice” for a corned beef on rye.

“I could tell you a million names of folks who came,” Mitchell Thal, who once managed the store, said.

What defined the store was the home cooking. Homemakers outsourced their Thanksgiving dinners to Epicure, from the never-frozen turkeys flown in from Maryland to pumpkin pies made with fresh-grated nutmeg. Jewish families relied on Epicure for High Holy Days. It wasn’t rare for the store to sell 15,000 pounds of kugel in a given week.

The menu was rich in family recipes, from Mama Jennie’s cabbage soup, a recipe Eddie Thal’s mother brought with her from Russia, to the noodle pudding and beet borscht. The brothers started their own wholesale meat company to ensure they got prime cuts and aged steaks for two to three weeks. At one point, at least 11 Thal family members were involved in the business, including Eddie’s brothers: Lenny, who oversaw the kitchen; Sydney, who ran the books; and Mervyn, who ran the meat department.

The Thals sold the business to the Starkman family, which founded California’s Jerry’s Famous Deli and brought that concept to South Beach before it, too, closed. The Starkmans tried to expand Epicure’s brand. They had bought Sunny Isles Beach’s Rascal House, the last Jewish deli of its kind in the area, and turned it into an Epicure outpost in 2008. They opened another Epicure in Coral Gables in 2013. But the Coral Gables location lasted less than two years, and the Sunny Isles location closed in March. With the South Beach location closed, it marks the end of one of the longest-running epicurean standbys in Miami, along with Joe’s Stone Crab and The Forge.

Catering to a younger crowd

Published Oct. 16, 2016

By Joey Flechas

The rush began when dozens filled the store just before noon.

People lined up to buy quinoa and lentil salad, hot meat and potato dishes for lunch. Others grabbed loaves of bread, packaged dried fruits or rare hot sauce. A steady stream of customers picked up their orders of challah before Yom Kippur. Around the room, people spoke on a first-name basis, and orders were already memorized.

“Some people come and their food is ready for them every day,” said John Lederman, co-owner of Joanna’s Marketplace on U.S. 1 at Ludlam Road. Nestled in the corner of a shopping plaza in unincorporated Miami-Dade between South Miami and Pinecrest, the gourmet store has been a fixture for locals since it opened in 1992.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had to adapt to survive. Changing consumer tastes, shifting demographics and increased competition from big chain stores have forced locally owned shops like Joanna’s and South Beach’s Epicure to emphasize what makes them unique, whether it’s specialty products or lower prices or creating a strong neighborhood atmosphere.

One recent, noticeable evolution has begun at Epicure Market. The original market in South Beach has stood since it opened as a butcher shop in 1945, eventually growing into a market, bakery and cafe.

But where blintzes, chopped chicken liver and fresh produce may have flown off the shelves in the past, today’s shopper prefers convenient grab-and-go items like prepared Italian dinners and lunch-sized salads, or produce that’s been chopped and peeled so it’s ready to go into a recipe with minimal prep work.

“They don’t have time to pick and smell and choose,” said Michael Love, Epicure’s specialty chef. “A lot of our customers want something quick. But because of our legacy of having such great food and being a gourmet market, it has to be good. It has to be great.”

The goal is to accommodate fast-moving customers - particularly millennials - while maintaining a high level of quality.

“We make small batches, just for the day,” said Lederman, Joanna’s co-owner. “So it’s more fresh.”

People want smaller portions and more convenience. And tastes have evolved. Places like Joanna’s and Epicure are selling more kale and quinoa than ever before.

“We used to use kale as garnish on catering orders,” joked Jason Starkman, CEO of Epicure.

But classics still sell, and older longtime customers still expect their favorites to be on the menu. Regulars still love the wild rice salad at Joanna’s. At Epicure, taking the matzoh ball soup away would be sacrilege.

The owners say the trick is to balance the old with the new in a way that makes them stand out from the increasing number of chain stores like Whole Foods, Fresh Market and Trader Joe’s that have been established in South Florida.

Lederman, whose store is one mile north of Trader Joe’s on U.S. 1, said the increased interest in the competition has actually put more customers in his store as they stumble upon Joanna’s on the way. The family-owned store doesn’t try to compete with the chain on price. Instead, it focuses on the quality and atmosphere of the store.

“People like to come here to feel at home. We’re their neighbors. We’re their friends,” he said. “That’s how we differentiate ourselves.”

At Epicure, they’ve taken a more aggressive approach. A Whole Foods right down the street is also a big neighborhood draw, so Epicure has dropped prices, renovated the store and reinvented its branding to stay relevant.

In a South Beach environment that is decidedly younger and hipper than 30 years ago, the store wants to give the younger crowd a reason to shop there.

“We had to do things to get the millennials to come here, as well,” Starkman said. “You name one millennial who’s looking for a good chopped liver.”

Probably not many. Instead, the store sells sliced watermelon pieces, personal-size salads with fresh dressing and vegetables that are peeled, cut and ready to cook.

Starkman knows about seeing a business through good times and bad. He ran Jerry’s Famous Deli for 14 years in the Beach before it closed in 2014. Even the Coral Gables location of Epicure had a short life, opening in December 2013 and closing in June 2015.

“It’s hard to keep up and be fresh,” he said. “It’s very difficult to keep the audience entertained.”

A Coral Gables location

Published Dec. 13, 2013

By Howard Cohen

John Tomberlin has been waiting for years for his hometown, Coral Gables, to open an Epicure Gourmet Market.

On Friday morning, he was the first customer to place an order and sit at the counter at the indoor 240-seat café and restaurant portion of the 24,000-square-foot grocery and prepared foods market. South Florida’s third Epicure joins the original Miami Beach location, opened in 1945 by the Thal family, and a Sunny Isles Beach branch that took over the old Rascal House restaurant building five years ago. The newest Epicure opened Friday at the base of the mixed-use residential tower, Gables Ponce.

The first toasted bagel. The first schmear of cream cheese. The first cup of coffee.

In between bites, Tomberlin gave the brightly lit, 24,000-square-foot Epicure its first review.

“I go to the one on Miami Beach and this is much closer to my house,” he said. “Everything is great so far.”

Ferne Toccin, another Gables resident and regular at the Beach store, was among the first through the doors at the 11 a.m. opening. She already had mapped out her destinations: the bakery counter, where Red Velvet cupcakes beckon through the glass, and the deli with its lavish spreads of smoked whitefish, low-fat tuna and lox and specialty cheeses. “I’ve been pushing them to open for a long time,” she said.

Jason Starkman, CEO of Epicure, listened. He had been hearing such demands and hoping to open in the Gables for years - eight years, in fact, he said. That’s how long it took to find a suitable location.

“We’ve been looking for a long time,” he said. “Maybe 15 percent of our customers at the South Beach store are from the Gables or the Grove or South Miami. What attracts me here is the year-round business.”

The new Epicure, which employs a staff of about 120, is the anchor of Gables Ponce, a 248-unit luxury rental apartment complex that opened this summer. The developer, Gables Residential, led by CEO Sue Ansel, plans to open a second phase, 119-apartment and 24,000-square-foot office space tower, adjacent to the Epicure sometime in 2014.

Despite Epicure’s popularity, Friday’s opening was a low-key affair. The steady stream of customers found many shelves and pantry cases not yet fully stocked. But the must-have quart jars of Matzoh Ball soup and rice puddings dusted with cinnamon were there.

“This is our first starting-from-scratch Epicure,” Starkman said as workmen scurried about making last-minute adjustments. I had the opportunity to design what I wanted to design and bring it to a level that surpassed everyone.”

The South Beach and Sunny Isles locations will still function as commissaries that prepare the baked goods for shipment to the chain, including the Gables branch. Hot foods and salads are made on the Gables premises by a team of three chefs.

While Epicure’s most famous foods will be stocked, the Gables store will have offer dishes unseen at the other locations. “Sometimes in Coral Gables customers may get to taste something you won’t in the Sunny Isles store because our chef may be trying something. I don’t like holding back my chef. They have creativity. I like them to try new things.”

Rugelach recipe

Published Dec. 13, 2007

By Linda Cicero

These cookies freeze well and make lovely holiday gifts. The always-gracious Thal brothers, founders of the landmark Miami Beach market, kindly shared this recipe with Cooks Corner in 1989. You can cut it in half -- and should, if you only have a hand mixer -- but since these are labor intensive, I like to make a lot at once.

DOUGH: * 1 pound (2 8-ounce packages) cream cheese * 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter * 1 pound (4 cups) all-purpose flour * ½ cup confectioners’ sugar * ¼ teaspoon vanilla

FILLING: * ¾ cup granulated sugar * 2 tablespoons cinnamon * ½ teaspoon ground ginger * About 2 cups apricot or strawberry preserves * 1 cup finely chopped pecans * 1 cup raisins * About ¼ cup melted butter

Beat the cream cheese and butter on slow speed of an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the flour, sugar and vanilla and mix on slow speed for 5 minutes. Divide dough in fourths, roll each into a ball, wrap in plastic and chill until easy to handle, at least 1 hour. Mix the sugar with the cinnamon and ginger.

Working on a lightly floured cloth or counter, roll out each portion of dough fairly thinly into a rectangle shape. Spread a thin layer of preserves on the dough. Lightly sprinkle with chopped pecans, raisins and sugar-spice mixture. Roll up, starting at a long end, as if making cinnamon rolls, until tube is about 1 inch in diameter. (This recipe will make several tubes; cut them once they’re thick enough, then proceed to make the next tube.) Chill thoroughly.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the dough tubes into 1-inch-long pieces, and set an inch apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets. Brush with melted butter. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until golden. Makes about 12 dozen cookies (5 pounds).

Per cookie: 76 calories (53 percent from fat), 4.6 g fat (2.6 g saturated, 1.4 g monounsaturated), 11.1 mg cholesterol, 0.75 g protein, 8.5 g carbohydrates, 0.3 g fiber, 13.5 mg sodium.

Farewell to Surfside

Published Aug. 22, 1991

By Cindy Ycaza

Epicure’s Hostess Pantry in Surfside, a 30-year-old satellite store of the famed Miami Beach Epicure Market, has closed its doors.

White paper with red writing now covers the front window at 9417 Harding Ave.: “Say Bye Hostess Pantry Surfside, Hello Epicure Market. Come shop at 1656 Alton Road.”

Initially, the owners of the Epicure had closed the Surfside store in May for renovations. Four weeks ago, they decided to shut it permanently.

Epicure Manager Mitchell Thal said the store was profitable, but there aren’t any plans to open another one.

“It is very difficult to run more than one market,” Thal said. “Originally, we were planning to expand to the property next door. Then the building was sold.”

The store’s 12 employees were transferred to the Epicure Market on the Beach, he said. That store is 46 years old.

The Hostess Pantry in Surfside opened in 1961, a quarter the size of Epicure Market. It featured prepared foods and baked goods, but did not offer fresh meats, produce or specialty services.

A store on 41st Street opened in 1965. But it closed in 1985.

Epicure delicacies had a stint in Burdines department stores from 1975 to 1980. Pan American World Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways still serve the market’s desserts and pastries on flights departing Miami.

Surfside Town Manager Hal Cohen said his office staff had long walked the two blocks to the store to bring take-out meals and baked goods back to the office.

“I am sorry to see it go,” said Cohen. “I used to stop there on the way home and buy capons. They have a very good cabbage soup. It is a loss to the community, that’s for sure.”

Bal Harbour Mayor Estelle Stern said she used to make frequent trips there. “I shopped there constantly, and I miss it terribly already,” she said. “That’s terrible news.”