A new exhibit at the Center for Jewish History in New York is showcasing one of the city’s oldest family-run food businesses, and in doing so shining a spotlight on the history and evolution of “appetizing” foods.
When what is now known as Russ & Daughters first opened on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1914, serving Jewish immigrants in an impoverished corner of the city, bagels and lox were not yet part of the nation’s everyday culinary lexicon. The food has since become popular throughout the U.S., along with other Russ & Daughters specialties such as herring, caviar, babka, rugelach, black and white cookies, and other traditional baked goods.
“Jewish food has become very trendy, and bagels and lox have become sort of mainstream,” Niki Russ Federman, who owns Russ & Daughters with her cousin, fellow fourth-generation family member Josh Russ Tupper, tells SFN. “To be able to look back, through the lens of my family and our business, through 105 years of Russ & Daughters, and see the arc of how this humble immigrant food has become iconic New York food, is really amazing.”
She describes appetizing as “one of New York’s very few New York-born creations.”
“It was born here by recent immigrants to New York, and it got diluted outside of New York when Jewish food became ‘deli’ as a catch-all phrase,” she says.
Unlike delicatessens, where the focus is on meats, appetizing stores offer the toppings traditionally placed on bagels, including smoked and cured salmon, homemade salads and cream cheeses. The niche was created to meet the demand from Eastern European Jews for “forshpayz,” the Yiddish word for cold appetizers, according to Russ & Daughters’ website. In addition, appetizing stores evolved from the Jewish dietary laws prohibiting the sale or consumption of meat and dairy products together.
In the 1930s, there were about 30 appetizing stores on the Lower East Side alone, the exhibit explains.
The exhibit, which is open through January 2020, features photos and other materials from the Russ & Daughters family archive, alongside other relevant items from the American Jewish Historical Society. Visitors will be able to listen to audio clips from Hattie Russ Gold and Anne Russ Federman, the second-generation partners known as the “Sturgeon Queens,” and will be invited to contribute their own food stories, which will be preserved in the Russ & Daughters collection at the AJHS.
In addition to being a pioneer of the appetizing culinary niche, Russ & Daughters also stands out in other ways. The company was the first in New York to incorporate “& Daughters” in its name when it did so in 1935. As a co-owner of the business with her cousin, Federman points out that the legacy of female owners lives on at the company. It is also one of the few family-owned businesses of any kind to survive to a fourth generation of family ownership.
Russ & Daughters has since expanded from its original retail location on the Lower East Side to add a cafe nearby, a restaurant and appetizing counter on the Upper East Side, and most recently, a new 18,000-square-foot “appetizing factory” in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it operates an appetizing store, a bakery, and a production facility to supply its other locations and wholesale customers. It also has offices there and uses it as the distribution center for its nationwide, direct-to-consumer shipping business, which now accounts for about 30 percent of sales.
The location has become a destination for the company’s many fans, who can watch their favorite items being prepared in an open kitchen.
Federman points out that one of the photos from the exhibit shows an early version of the Russ & Daughters store with the name “J. Russ National Appetizing” before her great-grandfather changed the name to Russ & Daughters.
“The reality was, it was Jewish food for a poor Jewish neighborhood serving poor Jewish customers,” she says. “Now … we ship nationwide. It feels like maybe we have fulfilled his aspirations.”
from Specialty Food News https://ift.tt/2l204DS
No comments: