Russ & Daughters

by Mark Russ Federman

  “So? Nu? Go buy them by Ostrover.”

  “They’re out of them.”

  “Lady, if I were out of them, I’d also sell them three for twenty-one.”

  How old do you have to be to be considered an old-timer? Sam, an immigrant from Russia by way of Czechoslovakia, became a successful zipper manufacturer in America. On his visits to Russ & Daughters, he would arrive via a chauffeur-driven car, perfectly groomed and in a suit and tie. He was obviously elderly, but he always entered the store straight of back and without any help.

  One day, while I was schmoozing with Sam, he said, “I’m your oldest customer.”

  “Not even close,” I responded, figuring that Sam was in his late eighties. We had customers well into their nineties.

  Sam pulled out his wallet and proudly handed over his driver’s license. Date of birth: 1905. This was 2008. Sam was 103 years old.

  “Sam, you were born in Russia? Did you know about the Russian Revolution?”

  “Know about it? I was in it!”

  Sam was indeed our oldest customer.

  One busy Sunday morning, I noticed an elegant-looking older gentleman with a full head of white hair standing quietly as he waited for his number to be called. He was dressed in a pin-striped shirt, a paisley tie, and a cardigan sweater; his gray pants were perfectly pleated. I’d never seen him in the store before, but after years in retail, I’d become pretty good at guessing age, ethnic background, occupation, and where people live. I figured this customer was an eighty-year-old WASP banker from the Upper East Side. To test that I hadn’t lost my touch, I engaged him in conversation. It turned out that Ira was ninety-three years old and a recently retired kosher caterer from Brooklyn. I was impressed. In deference to his age, I asked him if I could get him a chair so he could sit while he waited his turn. He glared at me with obvious disdain.

  “If I wanted to sit in a chair,” Ira snapped, “I would have brought my own!”

  No, he was definitely not a WASP banker from the Upper East Side.

  And then there are the other customers, those who have shopped in the store for years and whose families have shopped with us for generations. They’re not celebrities, but to us they are legendary because they have sustained us. They originally came in with their parents; now they bring their children and grandchildren, whom they will teach both how and where to shop for appetizing.

  Mrs. Manny

  “Mrs. Manny,” as she referred to herself, had five children: four boys who had graduated from the best schools and were now very successful professionals, and a daughter. She and her late husband had raised these children on the Lower East Side. Now her grandchildren were attending Ivy League schools. She would kvell to us about all of them.

  Every year, seven days before Rosh Hashanah (our busiest time of the year), Mrs. Manny would emerge from the subway on the corner of Houston Street and Second Avenue between 6:30 and 6:40 p.m., pushing her metal shopping cart. The store closed at 7:00 p.m. When she was spotted at the front door, the exhausted counter staff let out a collective groan. Some fled to the kitchen area in the back, while others went into slow motion with their current customers so they wouldn’t have to wait on her. She was sweet but demanding. She demanded quality. She demanded value. She demanded service. Every year it fell upon me, the owner, to wait on Mrs. Manny.

  Mrs. Manny came to Russ & Daughters every September to purchase eighteen herrings to take home and pickle. In Hebrew, the letters chet and yud combine to form the number eighteen, but they also combine to form the word chai, which means “life.” Mrs. Manny gave each of her children three pickled herrings as gifts for the New Year and saved three herrings for herself to share with certain anointed neighbors.

  For many years Mrs. Manny was content to buy her herrings from the display case in the front of the store. But that ended when she found out that Mimi Sheraton, then the restaurant critic for The New York Times, was allowed to pick her herrings from the barrels in the back of the store. From then on, Mrs. Manny would accept nothing less when buying herrings for her family. Mrs. Manny and Mimi Sheraton were the only two Russ & Daughters customers ever allowed to go into the back of the store to select their herrings right from the barrel.

  The actual process of choosing which 18 of the approximately 250 herrings in the barrel would go home with her was treated by Mrs. Manny with the same degree of gravitas as had been devoted, many years earlier, to deciding which of the many girls from the neighborhood she would allow her sons to “court,” or which colleges they would attend. The battle, or rather the sale, would begin and end in the same way each year. If I was lucky, it would take a half hour. More often than not, it would take me way past closing time.

  First I removed several layers of herring from the top of the barrel and put them into an empty bucket. It was understood that Mrs. Manny would never buy a herring from the top of the barrel. Then I reached into the barrel and fished out herrings one by one, holding each up and then turning it over and over in my hand for Mrs. Manny’s inspection. It was as thorough an exam as any doctor would ever perform. While every barrel of herring that Russ & Daughters sold contained only top-quality herrings, Mrs. Manny was determined to find the “diamonds” in those barrels. And, I must say, she knew what to look for: clear, shiny, steel-blue skin, plump but firm flesh on the back, and no blemishes, marks, or bruises. Eventually, we found enough herring for her discerning eye.

  Then she stopped showing up. There was no way of knowing what had happened. Did she get a bad herring that last year? Did she find a better place to buy herring? Did her doctor tell her not to expend her strength preparing herrings, or not to eat them anymore? Did she pass away? In some strange way, we missed her.

  Some years later, my wife and I were having dinner with new friends, a couple from our neighborhood. At some point the husband and I began recounting stories from our Lower East Side roots. He was raised in a tenement above the shoe store owned by his father. There were five children altogether, all successful, and the four boys all went to Harvard Law School. He understood my daily life as a retailer because he and his siblings were required to work in their father’s store on weekends and after school. The shoe store, named after his father, was Manny’s.

  He went on to tell us about his familiarity with Russ & Daughters. It seems that every year his mother would go to our store before the Jewish holidays to buy herring from the barrel, which she would then pickle, jar, and give to her children as gifts, as if they were the greatest treasures in the world. None of the children really liked pickled herring, but no one would dare tell her. But now that she had passed away, they miss both her and her pickled herring. I miss Mrs. Manny, too.

  How to Impress Your Family

  I hadn’t seen Jeffrey for a while. The thirtysomething financier usually placed a big order once a year for breaking the Yom Kippur fast, but on this visit he reminded me that he had recently bought a big spread for Mother’s Day “to share with my whole family,” he said. “Even Grandpa Irving was there.”

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “It was unbelievable. I live at the U.N. Plaza, in a terrific apartment overlooking the East River. You can see three bridges from my windows. I was made a partner at the hedge fund where I control two billion dollars’ worth of investments. I have a beautiful girlfriend, and she’s Jewish [emphasis his]. But not once did Grandpa ever acknowledge any of my successes or accomplishments. Then, in the middle of this family get-together, he comes over to me with a plate full of smoked fish and says, ‘Jeffrey, belly lox from Russ & Daughters? You must be doing very well.’ ”

  Customers like Sam, Ira, Mrs. Manny, and Grandpa Irving started out on the Lower East Side, then moved to apartments uptown or homes in the outer boroughs or suburbs. They owned businesses with their names on the front door, and they raised children who went to the best schools and became professionals. Their success was the result of hard work, grit, intuition, and an intelligence that had nothing to do with b
ook knowledge. These customers never allowed anyone to condescend to them; they remained in control of any situation. And they never accepted a helping hand—not a chair to sit on or a taxi ride home. They were once the typical Russ & Daughters customer; now they are few and far between. A dying breed. I miss them.

  Herring Purveyors to the Stars

  There are many stories about famous people who shopped at Russ & Daughters. Some are verifiable, others not quite truthful. I was told that Eleanor Roosevelt once came to the store, but upon close questioning of Aunt Hattie and my mother, the customer turned out to be a friend of the store’s landlady who, in turn, “knew” Mrs. Roosevelt. But both Aunt Hattie and Mom assure me that Bernard (“Barney”) Baruch’s chauffeur was indeed in the store and did buy fish. (They naturally assumed that the fish was intended for Mr. Baruch’s table and not the chauffeur’s.) I can verify the story that the gangster Bugsy Siegel was a customer, because from time to time I still hear from his granddaughter, who requests that we ship her schmaltz herring to Las Vegas and asks that they be “just like the ones my grandfather got from your grandfather.”

  Zero Mostel, showing his appreciation to Aunt Hattie

  (Copyright © Mal Warshaw)

  Many celebrity customers who were born on the Lower East Side and then moved away as fame and fortune allowed would come back to buy fish. Yiddish theater stars Molly Picon, Jenny Goldstein, and Aaron Lebedeff worked nearby and were regular customers. Zero Mostel frequently came in to buy belly lox and herring. According to family legend, Zero had wanted to marry my mother. One day he asked Grandpa Russ for her hand in perfect Yiddish. Grandpa Russ wouldn’t have any of it. Zero was a gantseh meshuggener (a total nut) with his constant tummeling (commotion making). And, worst of all, he was a batlan (someone without a regular means of earning a living). As it turned out, Zero was already married. You could never tell when he was kidding or being serious. One time he went behind the counter, sliced a bagel, and starting buttering it in the palm of his hand. To the delight of the other customers, he continued buttering all the way up his shirtsleeve.

  Zero also liked to help out behind the counter

  (Copyright © Mal Warshaw)

  Alexander “Sasha” Schneider, a renowned violinist with the Budapest String Quartet, was known as a tough, gruff, and impatient customer who loved his schmaltz herring. Schneider was born in Vilna, Lithuania, in 1908. The Litvaks, as Jews from Lithuania were known, claimed to speak a better Yiddish and to know more about music, art, literature, and food than their fellow Jews from less rarefied parts of the Diaspora. This knowledge included herring, of course. Sasha would show up at the store with a large round loaf of peasant bread under his arm. (He so loved that bread that he invested in the SoHo bakery where it was baked in wood-fired ovens.) As soon as he walked through the door with his bread, the largest, fattiest schmaltz herring in the case was gutted, skinned, and sliced. Sasha was then accompanied to the kitchen in the back of the store, where a bottle of vodka was kept on ice just for him. He relished each slice of herring, eating it not with the delicacy and finesse of a virtuoso violinist but with the urgency of a Jew expecting an imminent pogrom. Each bite of herring was followed by a piece of bread roughly torn from the loaf, and then chased with a shot of vodka. After two or three rounds of this ritual, Sasha would begin telling stories about growing up in Vilna: in particular, how his father, a construction worker and amateur flautist, demanded that he and his siblings practice their instruments—cello, violin, or piano—four to five hours every day. He always finished his herring and his stories by saying, “Deese jung people today dun’t know vhat it is to practice; and dey dun’t know a goot herring.”

  The celebrities keep coming to shop at Russ & Daughters. Artists, musicians, writers, actors, politicians, chefs, and restaurateurs, they are too numerous to mention here, and besides, we respect their privacy. They come in quietly, not identifying themselves, dressed down and relaxed. Just like everyone else, they take a number and wait their turn, wanting only to buy their bagels and smoked fish and then go home to enjoy it all with family and friends. We are honored by their patronage—as we are by all of our customers’.

  Niki, Josh, and Herman behind the counter.

  Anthony Bourdain is in front.

  Neither a Giver nor a Taker Be

  Grandpa Russ believed that family members should never accept gifts from customers or socialize with them outside the store. He never wanted to feel obligated to give a customer a special piece of fish or a discount in exchange for a favor. There would be no hondling (haggling or bargaining) in his store. That was for the pushcarts on the street. The Russ girls had this drilled into them as soon as they started working in the store. But my father and my uncles weren’t born Russes. They often ignored this unwritten rule.

  My father loved to buy goods from customers who were wholesalers or manufacturers. We sold retail ourselves, and we considered ourselves way too smart to buy retail. This often led to problems. For instance, my father once gave my mother for her birthday not one but a wholesale lot of a dozen of the same sweater, in assorted colors. Too bad if she didn’t like any of them, because they couldn’t be returned and she couldn’t say anything that might be perceived as negative to the customer who manufactured them. Dad also thought nothing of using customers as his lawyer, insurance agent, stockbroker—even his bookie. This often ended badly, with my father losing money and the store losing another customer.

  There was one exception to the Russ family prohibition against granting favors to customers. Special attention was given to the “biggest” doctors. You never knew; they might be needed someday. Uncle Murray, for example, would think nothing of asking a famous ear, nose, and throat specialist to interrupt his shopping and take a look at his sore throat. Invariably he would be told to stop smoking. For that advice, Uncle Murray never gave a discount. But for those doctors who told him not to worry about the smoking, he would go in the back and find a special piece of sturgeon or whitefish.

  Grandpa Russ wouldn’t approve, but I have met some of my dearest friends across the counter, and it’s never been a problem. There were times, however, when I paid too much attention to customers at the wrong moment, listening too carefully when I should have been just slicing. When I heard one customer telling another to buy stock in a fried chicken franchise, I invested in that stock. I watched as the stock went from pennies to dollars, and continued to watch as it went back to pennies and then disappeared. I did the same thing when I learned that a customer had started a biotech company that he claimed had developed a cure for cancer. I finally sold the stock at a substantial loss, after he went to jail. From then on, the only stock I bought was what I could sell in the store. My only long-term investment was in herring futures. Fortunately for all of us, I didn’t know that Bernard Madoff was a customer until the publication of his credit card slips showed several purchases at Russ & Daughters.

  Art for Fish

  The Bowery, Lower East Side, and East Village neighborhoods that surround Russ & Daughters were for many years home to young artists looking for cheap housing. (The old Provident Savings and Loan Bank building on the corner of East Houston and Essex was Jasper Johns’s studio in the 1970s.) Many of those starving artists would come into the store and offer to barter art for fish. I admit that I have no eye for and no interest in art, so I always passed. But on one occasion, I broke my rule and visited the Bowery loft of an artist customer. As he was showing me his canvases, I remarked that one painting with a large brown circle looked “just like a bagel.” This was obviously not the response he had been expecting. He quickly showed me out and stopped coming to the store. I do like to read and listen to music, and I am quite proud of my collection of autographed books and CDs, which I happily accepted in exchange for sandwiches. Don’t tell Grandpa Russ.

  The Art of the Schmooze

  You’re either born a great schmoozer or you’re not. Grandma Russ was always happy to schmooze. Since she spoke so littl
e English, her schmoozing was limited to Yiddish with the pushcart vendors on Orchard Street. They were happy to schmooze with her because she was one of their few customers who never hondled. Grandpa Russ, on the other hand, had neither the time nor the patience to schmooze. But Aunt Hattie and Aunt Ida were great schmoozers; they could charm a herring right out of the barrel. My mom took after her father; no patience for schmoozing there. But my dad was a natural-born schmoozer, and the customers lined up to be waited on by him. I was lucky enough to inherit the family schmoozing gene. Maria is a terrible schmoozer. Whatever the opposite of a schmoozer is, that’s Maria. Fortunately for our business, Niki is an even better schmoozer than I am. Josh is not a natural-born schmoozer. Until he came into the business he was an engineer, and they are not known for their schmoozing skills. But he has other essential qualities. For example, Josh finishes one task before starting another, a definite asset in running a business. Schmoozers, on the other hand, have difficulty getting things done; they’re too busy schmoozing. But as I have watched Josh run the business these past few years, I have seen his ability to schmooze improve along with his slicing skills. Customers now line up to wait for Josh to slice their salmon and listen to their stories. Behind the counter, he has become his Grandpa Herbie, world-renowned salmon slicer and schmoozer.

  People who are born schmoozers often go into retail businesses, usually small, family-owned ones. They like, and maybe even need, the personal interactions such places offer. People shop in small retail stores because they, too, like—and maybe need—that same personal interaction. Among people who work in retail, the great schmoozer doesn’t just talk but also knows how to listen. The ability to be a good listener is derived from a basic love of people. This must be genuine. It cannot be faked. There is no doubt in my mind that this joy in listening to people, in hearing their stories, sharing in their nachas and their tsuris, is genetic in origin. The schmoozing gene will soon be mapped.