{"id":918,"date":"2026-07-13T12:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T12:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=918"},"modified":"2026-07-13T12:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T12:37:00","slug":"new-york-is-a-pickle-kind-of-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=918","title":{"rendered":"New York Is a Pickle Kind of Town"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Not all foods endure\u2014ortolan, aspic, candy cigarettes\u2014but the pickle may be as close to immortal as a snack can get. The world\u2019s oldest known cookbook, from around 1700 B.C.E. Mesopotamia, includes a recipe for a pickled-fish-and-grasshopper sauce. Shakespeare wrote, in \u201cThe Tempest,\u201d about being \u201cin a pickle\u201d; pickles were served aboard the Titanic. Carlos Alcaraz and Frances Tiafoe have both been known to drink pickle juice in lieu of Gatorade\u2014no unfair advantage there. The U.S. pickle industry has an estimated revenue of three billion dollars per year.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=916\">Meet the Minion-Maker<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder, two principals at Mattmo Creative, a branding agency in Amsterdam, have become surprising experts in the preserved-cucumber field. In 2022, they published \u201cDe Zure Stad\u201d (\u201cThe Sour City\u201d), a history of Dutch pickles, then shifted focus across the Atlantic for \u201cThe Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles.\u201d<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an obsession, basically,\u201d van Ravestein said the other day, in the hundred-and-twelve-year-old Russ &amp; Daughters appetizing shop, on East Houston. During their New York pickle research, Mulder and van Ravestein had come upon a trove of tax-archive photographs from the early twentieth century, featuring a man posing with numbered placards in front of thousands of Lower East Side storefronts, nearly a hundred of which were pickle purveyors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us, suddenly, it became alive,\u201d Mulder said. \u201cA guy is waking up early in the morning and saying to his wife, \u2018I go to my work.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pair showed the photos to Niki Russ Federman, a fourth-generation owner of Russ &amp; Daughters, who was wearing the shop\u2019s traditional white lab coat and doling out pickled herring in cream sauce. Her Polish-\u00e9migr\u00e9 great-grandfather got his start selling schmaltz herring wrapped in day-old Yiddish newspapers from a barrel, then upgraded to a pushcart, then to a horse-drawn cart, then to the original store, around the corner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen it zoomed in like this!\u201d Russ Federman said, peering at an image. \u201cThis was the J. Russ National Appetizing Store\u2014there was nothing national about what he did. It was taking care of Jews within four square blocks.\u201d Joel savvily rebranded as Russ\u2019s Cut Rate Appetizing. Now Russ &amp; Daughters has a nationwide shipping operation and a restaurant that serves eighteen-dollar Break-Fast Martinis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you still here?\u201d van Ravestein asked. \u201cIs it resilience or flexibility?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLuckily, whether it was by choice or by obligation, in each generation there\u2019s been someone in the family who made this their life,\u201d Russ Federman replied. In 1935, the store became the first in the country to have \u201c&amp; Daughters\u201d in its name. \u201cJoel needed cheap labor,\u201d Russ Federman said. \u201cBut also, who better to sell pickles than three cute girls with their hands in herring barrels?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of communication, branding,\u201d van Ravestein posited.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou tell the story,\u201d Mulder added. \u201cThe food is an interface that is also your legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Van Ravestein munched on a half-sour and recalled an article, from 1890, that likened pickles to alcohol or coffee: \u201cSo kids couldn\u2019t eat them, because it gives you a kick.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=914\">Madonna Wants to Take You There<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Russ Federman mentioned a contemporary listicle of ten \u201csuperfoods,\u201d most of which were sold at her store: \u201cIt\u2019s herring, sardines, salmon, sauerkraut, liver\u2014caviar was on the list!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know what we had yesterday evening?\u201d Mulder asked, as she sipped a shrub (pickled-beet juice and vinegar, popular with the marathon-runner set). \u201cA vermouth with pickle juice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Dutch visitors headed south to Sweet Pickle Books, on Orchard Street, a hip used bookstore with a pickle side hustle that was opened, in 2020, by a millennial named Leigh Altshuler, who previously served as marketing director for the Strand. Shoved in a corner was an adult-size pickle costume by the designer who made Katy Perry\u2019s Super Bowl halftime-show sharks.<\/p>\n<p>Before opening her store, Altshuler had prepared three hundred and sixty jars of pickles to sell, and eventually started giving them away to people who donated books. \u201cI was, like, \u2018This for sure will last me forever. It\u2019ll be a gimmick,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she told the Dutch duo. A year later, her shop was bursting at the seams, and she kept selling out of pickles. \u201cPeople had been putting it on TikTok,\u201d she said. Altshuler had to outsource pickle production upstate, and began cranking out pickle merch. \u201cAll of a sudden, Harry Styles was wearing it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a whole drama.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mulder and van Ravestein mentioned the frenzy surrounding the Heinz pickle pin, a coveted souvenir at the 1939 New York World\u2019s Fair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople are obsessed with pickles!\u201d Altshuler said. \u201cPeople come in and say, \u2018Oh, look at my pickle tattoo,\u2019 or, \u2018My dog\u2019s name is Pickle.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Holland, a lot of young people, they\u2019ve started fermenting at home,\u201d Mulder added.<\/p>\n<p>The Sweet Pickle Books building\u2014near where \u201cLower East Side cool girlies\u201d (per Altshuler) had dumpster-dived for Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s old \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d costumes\u2014has been in its landlady\u2019s family for a century and a half. Altshuler said, \u201cHer grandfather sold melons from a pushcart outside.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=912\">The Met Turns Orientalism Inside Out<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dutch authors of a new book, \u201cThe Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles,\u201d stop by the brined-delicacy staple Russ &#038; Daughters. Emma Allen reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rebrand-dept"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>New York Is a Pickle Kind of Town - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=918\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New York Is a Pickle Kind of Town - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Dutch authors of a new book, \u201cThe Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles,\u201d stop by the brined-delicacy staple Russ &amp; Daughters. 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