JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
NEW YORK (JTA) — Larissa Raphael was sick of eating knishes that packed in plenty of potatoes but no punch. “I was like, ‘why does the knish need to be bland?’” she said. “I want it to taste really good.” As the former pastry chef of a late lamented restaurant that earned a Michelin star,…
Fleet Week draws to a close today, but I got a souvenir at Yohah Shimmel Knish Bakery in the form of this photograph. These three sailors, each from different parts of the country, were walking past the venerable Lower East Side bakery and deli and decided that the knishes in the window looked too good…
Why is the knish — that simple-yet-comforting food item made of mashed potatoes and encased in a puffy golden dough — such a ubiquitous New York food? The answer will be revealed in a new exhibition at the City Reliquary called “Heroes of the Knish: Making a Living and Making a Life,” which dives into…
The “Leopold Bloom,” above, is the knish for the urban adventurer, according to the bakery’s website. What happens when a homesick, Brooklyn-born bookworm decides to start making his own knishes in deli-starved Austin, Texas? You get , a wholesale bakery from which Joel Weinbrot slings up slightly loony literary-inspired knishes. The Austin Chronicle reports Weinbrot’s…
Alex Wolfman, a descendant of Yonah Schimmel, the knishery’s original owner. Flickr. After reporting earlier this week on rumors that 115-year-old Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery might be losing its lease, the Forward received an email today setting the record straight. In a follow-up phone call, the Forward spoke with Ellen Anistratov, daughter of Alex Wolfman,…
Photograph: Flickr Gussie Schwebel isn’t a household name — yet. But the Boroslav, Romania-born woman wrote herself into history when she wrote a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II. Mrs. Schwebel ran an eponymous knish concern at 191 East Houston Street, just off Orchard Street (the former site of the recently…
Photograph by Shawn Hote/Flickr. I don’t deal in rumors, but I also can’t ignore the deafening chatter. Bowery Boogie, a terrific blog about New York’s Lower East Side, has reported that 115-year-old East Houston eatery, Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, may be about to lose its lease. “Apparently word on the street is that the landlord…
Thinkstock “Proust had his Madeleine, Jewish New Yorkers had their knishes,” writes Laura Silver in her new book “Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food.” Silver, a food writer and self-proclaimed knish scholar has been tracking the knish — and feasting on them — for over a decade. This is a woman who takes…
