Bruce Sobol, 43, Caviar Importer
Hyfler/Rosner
Bruce Sobol, 43, Caviar Importer
Caviarteria Owner an Apparent Suicide Amid Reversals
By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
When Bruce Sobol, owner of the Caviarteria, was found dead last Monday in
his Upper East Side Apartment, an apparent suicide at age 43, it was the
culmination of a string of misfortunes that dogged the once-prosperous
vendor of high-end food.
The business had prospered in the 1990s, when caviar and champagne seemed
the natural accompaniment to Wall Street wealth. When the market went south,
demand for caviar did, too, and the business had recently closed five of its
seven outlets around the country.
The closures came in the wake of the suicide at age 39 of Bruce Sobol's
brother and business partner, Eric Sobol, in 2001, a death that came amid
lawsuits and personal problems.
The 1990s were a wide-open era in the caviar business. Louis Sobol
founded Caviarteria in 1950. When he died in 1992, his sons inherited a
business that sold about $10 million annually in luxury comestibles.The
nature of the business was changing rapidly, as the traditional source of
the best caviar, the Soviet Union, broke into constituent states and with it
went law and order.
Tales of Russian and Polish immigrants arriving in America with suitcases
full of smuggled caviar became commonplace, as did stories of sturgeon being
hunted to the brink of extinction. Some of the dealers the Sobols used ran
afoul of the law, and at one point shipments bound for Caviarteria were
impounded at JFK.
While Eric Sobol was buying fish roe from a shadowy dealer named Igor,
operating variously out of Lithuania and the United Arab Emirates, Bruce was
the public face of the company, doing memorable interviews with the press
and generating publicity with things like demonstrations at Macy's.
At one demonstration Bruce met the woman who would become his wife, Lydia
Wagner. Fittingly enough, she was an executive for a company that imported
Taittinger champagne. Their 1999 wedding featured Ultra Beluga, top-grade
caviar. "Ultra Beluga is silver-gray, creamy but light," he told the
assembled guests. "It's the best and the rarest."
At about the same time, Caviarteria undertook its most aggressive
expansion to date, opening outlets at Grand Central Terminal and the Soho
Grand Hotel, as well as in Las Vegas and
Florida. The economy was peaking, and like many others, the brothers could
see nothing but good times ahead. "We are the Tiffany's of the caviar
business," Eric told Crain's New York Business in 1998. "We're
recession-proof because of our loyal customer base."
Soon after, the company became embroiled in a series of lawsuits with the
government over caviar that customs had impounded at JFK. Divorce
proceedings were initiated between Eric and his wife, Brenda Black Sobol. By
2001, Caviarteria reported a $2 million loss. In April of that year, Eric
took his own life, shooting himself in the head with two handguns while
sitting in his Mercedes in the parking lot of a Friendly's in Pennsylvania.
Traces of heroin were found in his system.
His wife Brenda - the two were separated but not divorced - called it a
sacrifice to save the family business with life insurance proceeds. Soon,
she and Bruce were suing each other over the administration of the estate:
Bruce accusing her of having strayed from her vows, Brenda accusing him of
having destroyed a suicide note that could have qualified as a valid will.
The new New York stores were shuttered, although the original restaurant on
East 59th Street remained open. The restaurants in Las Vegas, Beverly Hills,
Calif., and West Palm Beach, Fla., were closed, too, leaving Boca Raton,
Fla., as Caviarteria's only remaining outlet outside of the city.
Publicly optimistic, Bruce Sobol continued to speak to the press often,
touting American paddlefish caviar and Carolina trout roe in recent food
columns in New York papers. In the March 2002 issue of Inc. magazine, he
called caviar an "affordable luxury," surely not the kind of éclat that he
was striving for a few years earlier. He said 80% of the company's business
was now in mail order, although as late as last month he was talking about
opening new restaurants in Aspen, Colo., Chicago, and Seattle.
Reports were that Bruce was found dead at his apartment on East 74th
Street last Monday, an overdose of sleeping pills in his system and a
plastic bag over his head. His wife and daughter were on vacation at the
time.
Bruce Sobol
Born October 27, 1959; died in New York City; surviving are his wife,
Lydia, daughter, Lucy, and mother, Ruth