West 86th Street knows its desserts. It’s the 1970s, and pop­py­seed strudel, pra­line ice cream cake, and New York cheese­cake are as inte­gral to Man­hat­tan’s Upper West Side as clus­tered pigeons, suit­ed door­men, and greasy din­ers. That is, until Cato comes to town. Cato the Elder, a Roman born in 234 BCE, is cred­it­ed with the ear­li­est writ­ten recipe ever found. A recipe for … cheese­cake. No cream cheese, no gra­ham crack­er crust, some­how savory and sweet, the recipe is enig­mat­ic-and sud­den­ly, it’s all any­one on West 86th Street can talk about.

The Kat­sikas­es, a Greek cheese­mak­ing fam­i­ly who immi­grat­ed to open a restau­rant in New York, added Cato’s pas­try to their menu as a ploy to attract ​“upscale” din­ers. After a glow­ing write-up in the Times, the recipe becomes a neigh­bor­hood fix­a­tion-and the Kat­sikas­es’ patri­arch, Art, buys up as much of the block­’s real estate as he can. As the por­ten­tous pas­try appears in the lives of the old-school res­i­dents Art is pric­ing out of their apart­ments, a side­walk view of West 86th Street emerges: A high-pro­file fam­i­ly plan­ning a high-pres­sure bat mitz­vah, a painter’s muse with a ter­ri­ble secret, an eccen­tric art col­lec­tor plot­ting revenge. Some­times laced with green M&Ms, some­times with sage, some­times with spite, Cato’s cheese­cake her­alds change as West 86th Street is trans­formed for good.