Bloom’s glass trays from Bloom’s Restaurants in Aldgate and Golder’s Green – 1960s, 1970s.

I have these two items in my Anglo-Judaica collection.  They are small glass trays or dishes from Bloom’s famous kosher restaurant – which actually had two branches in Aldgate in the East End of London, and in Golders Green in North-West London.  Plus a short-lived branch in Edgware. Before the age of credit cards, you paid for your meal in cash – pound or ten-shilling notes – and the waiter brought back your change in these trays.  You then left a few of the coins in the tray as a tip.  The trays also doubled as ash-trays.

The older dish is from the Aldgate restaurant at 90 Whitechapel High Street, which was opened  in 1952 by Sidney Bloom, son of the original Morris Bloom, who had opened the first shop in Brick Lane in 1920.  It says “Restaurant and Salt Beef Bar.”  You could go there for lunch and order a plate of salt beef and a latke, and the waiter would bring you a pint of beer from the pub nearby.  The decorations included large pictures of the market in Petticoat Lane.

The dish has the slogan Buy Bloom’s Best Beef. Bloom’s sold its products to kosher butchers everywhere. Viennas, of course – Bloom’s Viennas had a distinct flavour – Worsht, and tinned food which made kosher travel possible before there were frozen meals.  They tinned everything from Kneidlach soup to cholent and complete chicken dinners.

The second dish has the addresses of both branches and the artwork has been redrawn with similar people and the row of Worsht hanging in the window.  The real vertical Bloom’s sign (on the right) had white lettering on a red background.

As young teenagers we would go to the Golder’s Green branch and buy a sandwich and a latke to take away. Salt-beef, I think was aboout 3/6, chopped liver was half a crown and a latke was sixpence.

The Golder’s Green branch was more social. You could be a regular single diner, which my late brother was, or a family. It was almost guaranteed that you would see two or three people that you knew. The kitchen “sold” the food to the waiters, who would be sure to collect payment from the customers – I think they got a commission.  The waiters, who had been there for years, had a reputation for being rude, but were not really – it was part of the show.  This place was a regular venue for my parents to take my wife and I out to dinner.

I also have a Bloom’s advertising brochure from the 1960s. You can read about it by clicking here.

The Aldgate branch closed in 1996, and the Golder’s Green one in 2010.