A Preserved Delicacy

At lunchtime on a Wednesday afternoon in early October, Russ & Daughters is busy. Standing side by side at the tall counter is a 20-something pregnant woman and an older man with graying hair. The young woman looks on, staring through the glass case into the eyes of a salted and sliced herring, twisting her face and placing her hands on her hips.

“Can I have an onion bagel—with not too many onions—and tofu cream cheese?” she asks, glaring at the piles of fish in front of her. “Oh and please don’t touch any fish before making my bagel, because I hate fish. And I’m pregnant. And I really hate fish.”

While she waits, the gray-haired man smiles and quietly orders his “usual”—a bagel with lox.

Today, Russ & Daughters is well known outside of New York Jewish circles. The new arrivals on the Lower East Side streets—like condos, boutiques, and bars—have attracted a new group of customers.

“A lot of hipsters and models and international people coming to have fun in the city now shop at Russ & Daughters,” Federman says.

The crowd – generally younger, more artsy and less Jewish—has created a new sort of business for Russ & Daughters. Now, the food is trendy. The shop’s previously 95 percent Jewish customer base has now shifted to a fifty-fifty split between Jews and non-Jews. Rather than being just another place to pick up necessities, Russ & Daughters is a destination.

Sometimes Federman looks outside and has a hard time seeing the neighborhood that her great-grandparents settled in. “The Lower East Side has this fame and this special place in our collective consciousness,” she says. “But coming into the neighborhood, there are so many boutiques and restaurants—there’s no way to access that history.” She points toward the American Apparel just next door.

Nearby, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and newly restored Eldridge Street Synagogue take visitors back for a glimpse of that history. According to David Favoloro, research director of the Tenement Museum, preservation efforts on the Lower East Side are focused primarily on saving original architecture and refurbishing old tenements for contemporary residents. These preservation efforts have not yet turned to cultural establishments like Russ & Daughters. Physical and architectural destinations can be landmarked; the people and businesses can’t be. As the skyline and real estate prices steadily rise, chunks of the past are chipped away, leaving behind just a few blocks of cobblestone roads and visible fire escape ladders—contraptions installed on the sides of these buildings, enabling the people inside to get out from the windows in their apartments, rather than leaving through the main staircase. In 1867, the city of New York mandated that fire escapes be included in the construction of all new tenement buildings, to help ensure the safety of the immigrants inside. Orchard Street, where many immigrants lived and worked, is becoming the Lower East Side’s Mulberry Street: one block of forced preservation, overflowing with the culture of an entire community’s past.

With Niki Federman’s help, the family has adapted to the new Lower East Side, updating the shop to accommodate their new customers without alienating their regulars. They have computerized their check out process and added fat-free muffins and three kinds of tofu cream cheese. Federman and the other owners listen diligently to their customers’ feedback, and give the loyals and the newcomers equal consideration.

Though the shop sells new, “modern” versions of classic foods, as well as more gourmet items, like caviar and wild white smoked salmon, Federman and Tupper have not completely updated their offerings. They continue to sell salt herring for a handful of older customers who enjoy pickling their own fish once it has been salted by the shop. Crowding the bottom shelf of the store’s display are jars filled with sweets that Federman knows never make it back out through the door.

“A lot of the sucking candies don’t really sell and they are taking up space on the shelf, Federman says, “but its sort of just a nod to another generation.”

The Russes pride themselves on keeping their store well stocked; Federman can’t remember a time when they have run out of a particular item. Throughout its existence, the family has insisted on using many different suppliers to assure the quality and availability of their products, and Federman prefers not to mention any one company as the main source of their fish.

One such company is Brooklyn-based Acme Smoked Fish Corporation, also a fourth generation family-run business that has worked with Russ & Daughters since Joel Russ was in charge. Laws prevent Russ & Daughters from smoking fish in the store, so they outsource the smoking to Acme, which has smokers spread out from upstate New York to Denmark who follow their specific instructions.

Russ & Daughters has also installed an integrated computer system, which not only compiles purchased items into receipts, but also keeps track of the shop’s inventory and logs customers’ past orders.

“Some people were like ‘Oh, why did you have to get all fancy on us? Why do I need this whole mishegas [Yiddish for “craziness”]?’ And then others said, ‘What took you so long?’” says Federman.

Vivian, a loyal customer who lived on Eighth Street near New York University for years, stops in when she can, despite her recent move to Massachusetts.

“Last month I didn’t have any, so I need a fix,” she says. “This is the best fish.”

Behind her large glasses, Vivian’s magnified eyes are accompanied by a gap-toothed grin; she knows this place and knows this food. She looks at Federman as if she’s one of her own and reaches out, touching her light blue shirt and complimenting its fabric.

“I’ve been coming here since I’m 19 or 18,” she says. “I just turned 64.”

Federman smiles and her voice becomes slightly more nasal, her intonation a worn-in welcome mat to all of Russ & Daughters’ Jewish customers who now seem to stick out in this area. Federman admits that she doesn’t have the same relationships with the older customers as her father does, but she knows that her youth offers the younger generation something new.

“Every day there is something that happens here or some story that a customer tells me that affirms that this is a special place,” she says. “People really have such an emotional attachment to it. That it means so much for them makes all the work worthwhile.”