My spouse and I dined at Russ and Daughters Café for
breakfast on a Monday morning in mid-February 2017. The Café (not to be
confused with the shop, just a few blocks away), is open weekdays from 10:00 am
to 10:00 pm and on weekends from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm for breakfast, brunch,
lunch, dinner, snacks, and cocktails. (The paper placemat menu remains the same
throughout the day, with the addition of two special entrees available after
5:30 pm.) You can make dinner reservations using the Reserve app one month in
advance; however walk-ins are also accepted. Only walk-ins are permitted for
breakfast, brunch, and lunch, which could mean waits of two hours or more
during busy times. Initially, we tried to visit at 11:00 am on a Saturday and
were quoted at least an hour-and-a-half wait, so we returned the following
Monday and were waiting in line when they opened their doors at 10:00 am.
Incredibly, by 10:04 am, every table (and every seat at the soda fountain/bar)
was filled, and the wait was at least one hour. For handicap-access, ask the
restaurant about the special door. (One restroom is accessible.)
The Russ and Daughters Cafe opened on the Lower East Side
near the intersection of Orchard and Delancey Streets in May 2014 to coincide
with the 100th anniversary of the Russ & Daughters shop. Both the café and
the shop are still owned and operated by the fourth generation of the Russ
family. An uptown outpost at the Jewish Museum provide both the store and cafe
experience to museum patrons. The Café is modelled on the retail store,
including black-and-white backlit signs/light boxes that describe offerings
such as pickles, sardines, babka, bialys, and rugelach with shelves that display boxes of matzo and
jars of dried fruits. The café includes a soda fountain in lieu of a drinks bar
(which sells homemade sodas, egg creams, shrubs, and cocktails, as well as
mass-produced beer and wine), a fish-slicing counter/case, and a semi- open
kitchen where you can observe the usual goings-on. Staff wear iconic white Russ
and Daughters lab/butcher coats and serve you at the baked-enamel counter of
the soda fountain, at a table with a marble top, or in a vinyl booth. A herring marble floor, a sculpture of a fish
swimming through a bagel, vintage black-and-white photographs of the Russ and Daughters store, and clever bathroom wallpaper printed
with deli tickets complete the charming retro look.
In 1907, Joel Russ emigrated from Galicia (now Poland) and
began selling herring from a barrel to Eastern European Jews on the Lower East
Side. Seven years later, he graduated to a pushcart operation, then a horse and
wagon, and finally, a brick-and-mortar store, originally located on Orchard
Street, but now on East Houston.
With only daughters (named Hattie, Ida, and Anne), Russ
required them to work in the shop, eventually making them full partners, as
reflected in the store’s name (one of the first businesses in the US to include
“& Daughters” in its name.) The daughters married men who joined the
business. Today, four generations later, the family business is thriving. (Typically
in the US, less than 1% of family businesses survive long enough to enter the
fourth generation.) Russ & Daughters’ contributions as such a long-standing
family business and community anchor have been recognized by the New York City
Mayor’s Office, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, The Smithsonian Institution,
The Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Smithsonian Institute, the National
Register of Historic Places, “The New
York Times”, “Gourmet”, “Bon Appetit”, Martha Stewart, NPR, “The
New Yorker”, “New York Magazine”,
PBS, The Food Network, The Travel Channel, “The New York Times Magazine”, “The Wall Street Journal”, and “Vogue”. If you want to learn more, check out the book “Russ
& Daughters: the House that Herring Built” and the documentary “The
Sturgeon of Queens”.
The café offers the Jewish Cuisine for which the appetizer
shop became famous, including Russ’s famous shissel (similar to rye bread,
which is imported from an artisan in an outer borough and uses an 80-year old
starter). We ordered the bread basket so that we could try the shissel, along
with sliced pumpernickel, challah, onion bialys, and two kinds of bagels (poppy
seed and everything). The basket serves 4+ people, and we had plenty left over
to take home. We shared the knishes stuffed with potato and onion (this item is
available in the restaurant only; it is not available in the shop). We also
ordered two entrees: the Stetl (a board with sable fish, tomato, red onion,
capers, bagel, and cream cheese), and the Kasha Varnishkes with a poached egg (Kasha
is toasted hulled buckwheat [grotes] served with bow tie noodles and onions).
And a buxar (molasses) egg cream (which contains neither egg nor cream!).
As novices to the world of Jewish cuisine, we loved our
unique and delicious breakfast at Russ and Daughters café!
