CHUBS AND WHITEFISH: Those of us of a certain age (i.e., over fifty) and of a certain ethnic background (i.e., Jewish) will probably remember the look on our parents’ or grandparents’ faces when they were about to consume a chub or a piece of whitefish; it was something between intense focus and beatification. The fish was placed on a bed of lettuce accompanied by thick slices of tomato and onion; on the side would be a slice of either rye or pumpernickel bread, or a wedge of corn bread, or a toasted bialy. Butter was the preferred spread here, not cream cheese. With a knife and fork, the once-white skin of the fish, which had turned golden brown during the hot-smoking process, was peeled back to reveal the meat moistened by its own body fat. Boning the fish required the intensity and dexterity of a brain surgeon. There was no conversation, no kibitzing, just total focus as the meat slid away from the underlying layer of bones, leaving the fish frame intact. Then came the taste—rich, sweet, smoky, and satisfying.
The whitefish-and-chub experience is still available, but it is becoming increasingly rare. Their spawning and feeding grounds in the Great Lakes (their primary fishery) has been overrun by non-indigenous species such as the zebra mollusk and the lamprey eel, which were inadvertently introduced into the water through the ballast of ships that arrived from foreign ports.
STURGEON: Considered to be the crème de la crème of all smoked fish, sturgeon was a throwaway fish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was so plentiful in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that it was exported to Europe, and even to Russia, along with its roe. But by the twentieth century, overfishing had turned sturgeon into an expensive delicacy. In the appetizing shops of the Lower East Side it commanded more than ten times the price of lox: when lox was being sold at thirty-five cents a pound in the 1920s and ’30s, sturgeon went for $4 a pound. Aunt Hattie remembers that the wife of a very wealthy publishing magnate would frequent our store, arriving in a chauffeur-driven limousine. On each visit she would look at the price of the sturgeon in the showcase but never buy any. “I’m shocked! Too expensive!” she would loudly announce, as if to let the other customers know that although she was rich, she was still frugal. She would buy the cheapest thing in the store—sauerkraut. The smart shoppers in the neighborhood bought “sturgeon ends,” the tips of the larger sturgeon pieces that would break off at the point where metal pins had been inserted to hang them for smoking. This part of the fish couldn’t be sliced, so it was sold in small chunks. These small bits of sturgeon meat surrounding the bone were rich and delicious. Sturgeon ends sold for twenty-five cents a pound.
By the 1950s smoked sturgeon was considered such a delicacy that it figured in a Senate bribery investigation. In 1955 Harry Lev, a hat-maker from Chicago by way of Pinsk, Russia, was under investigation by the United States Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for bribing government procurement officials to obtain a military hat contract. The alleged bribe: half a ton of smoked sturgeon. Harry’s defense: a bribe is “something to wear, clothing”; sturgeon is something “very special to eat.”
SABLE: Once called the “poor man’s sturgeon,” sable was presented to consumers as a replacement for carp, which was a common bony freshwater bottom-feeding fish whose muddy taste was masked with a mixture of paprika and garlic that was spread over the fish right before the smoking process. Sablefish, a black cod from the northern Pacific Ocean, was plentiful and cheap when it first entered the smoked-fish lexicon in the 1960s. It was prepared the same way as carp, but it had a much cleaner flavor and could be sold sliced from fillets and without bones. People preferred it over carp, and it became known to buyers and sellers as “chicken carp.” But the Food and Drug Administration, in its wisdom, determined that this fish was neither chicken nor carp and disallowed use of the name. Thereafter, it was sold under its generic name, sablefish, or, more commonly, sable. Today, sable can no longer be called the poor man’s sturgeon. The Japanese have discovered that black cod in sake-miso glaze suits their palates. They are the most voracious fish eaters in the world and will pay any price for their fish. So although it’s still fairly plentiful, sable is no longer cheap.
The Disappearing Products: The Fish That Got Away
BUTTERFISH: Every so often, Aunt Hattie and my mom wistfully recall the fish they sold as young girls. “Do you ever get butterfish in?” they ask me. “It was delicious.” Butterfish do still exist, but they’re too small to smoke; nowadays, they are mostly used as bait. At its best, butterfish was sweet and looked like a round-bellied chub. You had to be careful when eating it because of its many small bones, and you would want to avoid the black, bitter meat on the bottom of the fish. But the butterfish-eating crowd was adept at avoiding the bad parts and feasting on the sweetness of the major portion of this fish. Today, people don’t like to deal with fish bones, so this one fell out of favor and is no longer sold.
RUSSIAN WHITE LOX: By the time I took over the business in 1978, Russian white lox (beloribitsa) was no longer sold in the store; it had been overfished and was unavailable. But I do remember it as a kid. A type of salmon that was native to the Caspian Sea, it was actually earthy beige in color rather than pure white. Its distinguishing feature was its fattiness, which made it a treat for all real fish lovers who understand that when it comes to fish, the fatter it is, the better it is. In those days, the salmon would be sliced and the slices laid out on sheets of wet wax paper. The beloribitsa was so fatty that the slices often slid off the paper, sometimes to the floor.
When people come into the store looking for beluga caviar, butterfish, or beloribitsa, they’re often looking to recapture a taste experience from their own food memory or from that of an aging parent or grandparent. We give them the bad news with a lengthy explanation of why we no longer carry these items—they were fished out, or they’re too salty or too bony for today’s tastes. But no one asks for kapchunka anymore.
Kapchunka: When Is a Fish Not a Fish?
When Grandpa Russ renovated the store in 1950, he hand-stenciled the names of the various products we sold—Nova Scotia, lake sturgeon, whitefish, herring, pickles, olives, et cetera—in big black letters along the soffit above the top shelves. This architectural feature still exists today at Russ & Daughters.
The section of the soffit that is visible through the front window, the first one seen by passersby in the street, reads SMOKED EEL. Smoked eel, a non-kosher fish, was sold in the store only during the Christmas holidays to non-Jewish Eastern European customers. Eel was never displayed in the showcase. Jews didn’t eat smoked eels, nor did they like looking at them. Compared to the other fish in the showcase, eel is ugly and snakelike in appearance, and so it was kept in the refrigerator in the back of the store. I once asked my mother and Aunt Hattie why Grandpa Russ promoted this trayfe item so prominently on our walls. It had never even occurred to them to ask him. “That’s what Papa wanted, and that was that,” they replied. Shoyn. Fartig. Case closed.
The next soffit section reads KAPCHUNKA. Customers often ask, “What’s a kapchunka?” Kapchunka is a salted and air-dried whitefish with its guts still inside. We sold kapchunka in the store until about twenty years ago. To air-dry the fish we would place twine through the mouth and gills and then hang the fish from hooks in the front of the store. As the fat dripped out, the fish would get drier, saltier, and chewier. A special treat for the kapchunka eater was to find roe when they cut open the belly of the fish. Alas, the enjoyment of kapchunka wasn’t passed from generation to generation. I wonder why.
Because kapchunkas aren’t refrigerated and are dried with the guts intact, they can be dangerous if not processed correctly by producers or handled properly by retailers. In 1985 an elderly Russian American couple died of botulism poisoning from consuming kapchunka purchased at a Queens appetizing store. The Food and Drug Administration immediately sent out an all-points bulletin to the appetizing world in search of the deadly fish and issued a nationwide Class I recall. By that time, we had so few customers who a
te kapchunka that we were no longer carrying it. Nowadays, for those customers who see the name on the soffit and ask about it, I’m happy to explain what it is.
There’s one other family story about kapchunka. Some time ago my second cousin Steven Ebbin came across an old, yellowing, undated newspaper clipping with the heading “When Is a Fish Not a Fish?” It told the story of Channah Russ Ebbin, Steven’s grandmother, and sister and mentor to Grandpa Russ, who had received a summons for violating a new law that required fish sold to the public to be kept under refrigeration. According to the article, Channah Ebbin, acting as her own lawyer, presented a novel defense: this was not fish that she was selling; it was “kapchunka.” She explained to the judge that kapchunka did not require refrigeration, and that in fact refrigerating them would ruin their taste. Nobody would buy a cold kapchunka, she testified. She won the case.
The Candy Side: A Little Something Sweet
Men and women of Grandpa Russ’s generation always kept individually wrapped hard candies in their pockets or purses, because you never knew when you might have a coughing fit or encounter a child who needed a treat. Grandpa Russ had his favorites: hopjes, coffee-flavored cubes made in Holland; Napoleon Lemon Sours, which became more tart as you sucked them; Israeli fruit-filled, with pretty pictures of fruit on the wrapper and a chewy, fruity center; English Crystal Mints, a definite breath aid; and sesame honey candies that were often quite sticky after being carried around in his pocket all day, especially in the summertime. Grandpa enjoyed dispensing these candies to his grandchildren, a small act of sweetness from a man not given to displays of affection. Those of us who didn’t run away when he tried to scare us by removing his false teeth were rewarded with a candy.
It’s not known when appetizing stores began selling confections as a counterpoint to the salty, smoky, and pickled flavors of the fish and herring, but the model eventually became the standard. When Grandpa Russ enlarged and renovated the store in 1950, a separate area was devoted to the sucking candies he and his contemporaries favored, and to dried fruits that were used in compotes (assorted fruit slowly cooked in a sugar syrup and often served as dessert). The entire window of the candy side of the store was lined with overflowing bins of dried fruits: apricots, pears, peaches, apples, and two different kinds of prunes—jumbo prunes from California and sour prunes from Oregon. Hanging just above the dried fruits were strings of dried Polish mushrooms, which were then plentiful and cheap. (Today they sell for $200 a pound!) These deeply flavored, earthy mushrooms were often used as a meat substitute in thick, hearty barley soups during difficult economic times, when meat was just too expensive for some people.
By the time I started working in the store on weekends in 1958, just after my bar mitzvah, there were many new additions to the candy side: candied ginger, caramels, pineapple cores, apricots, prunes, and orange peels, all hand-dipped in chocolate. Little chocolate balls filled with rum flavoring. A mixture of chocolate-covered candied fruit and nuts called bridge mix. Sheets of dark chocolate with whole roasted almonds partially buried within, called almond bark. Chocolate-covered marsh-mallows called twists, which customers stored in their freezers and ate frozen. Imported pistachios from Iran, figs from Turkey, dates from Syria, sugar-glazed fruit from Australia. Chocolate-covered jelly rings, jelly bars, and halvah (in chocolate, vanilla, marble, and marble-with-nuts varieties). The newly created candy side was run in the same manner as the fish side: buy the best products available in the marketplace, handle them carefully, and make sure there’s a Russ around to sell them.
Since there’s little demand today for individually wrapped hard candies, I relegated them to a few jars on a bottom shelf when I renovated the store in 1995. Gummy candies are the preferred sweet of today’s youngsters. When kids begin to show signs of impatience while their parents are buying fish, I offer them a choice of a complimentary gummy worm, gummy fish, or gummy bear. Studying the jars and deciding which animal to select takes serious thought. Then it takes time to choose the color—red, yellow, green, or orange. The kids are occupied, the parents are relieved, and the Russ tradition of dispensing candies is maintained.
Nowadays, customers come in looking for the sweets they haven’t had since they were kids or have heard about only from their parents or grandparents: chocolate-covered halvah squares; marshmallow-wrapped apricots and prunes; orange-and-red-layered marmalade bars covered with chocolate sprinkles; candied kumquats in heavy, sticky syrup; and Indian nuts. While these items no longer exist, we have many other sweets to choose from to make our customers happy: babka, rugelach, hand-dipped chocolates and truffles, mountains of halvah. And the display in the window is still filled with overflowing bins of dried fruits—which are still ideal for fruit compotes.
So, What’s New?
When Niki and Josh were fairly new to running the store, Maria and I decided to take a two-week vacation. We left with our normal vacation angst: Would the store still be there when we returned? To our relief, Russ & Daughters was, in fact, in one piece when we got back. Then I overheard a customer step up to the counter and ask for a “Super Heeb.”
“What the hell is that about?” I asked Josh. He pointed to the sandwich menu, which now had in bold letters: “NEW ITEM: THE SUPER HEEB. Sesame bagel, horseradish cream cheese, whitefish salad, and wasabi-flavored flying fish roe.”
As I had feared, the store was about to go under.
“Josh, you can’t do this!” I said.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Are you kidding? This is offensive on every level! I realize that my sister raised you on an ashram and you lived on the West Coast, but in this town there are two words you cannot use: one begins with an N and the other with an H. The N you obviously know. The H stands for ‘Heeb,’ and it doesn’t make it any more acceptable to put a ‘super’ in front of it. Yes, one Jew might be able to call another a Heeb in private, as an inside joke, with no one else around. But that’s it. I’m chalking this mistake up to your out-of-the-city communal upbringing.”
My restraint masked my anger, and in my anger I felt a channeling of the outrage of the previous generations of Russes who had run this as a traditional ethnic store, selling mostly Jewish food to mostly Jewish customers in what was once a mostly Jewish neighborhood, where the only people who called you “Heeb” in public were the ones who were about to beat you up because you were a Jew.
Josh offered something of an explanation: “It’s delicious. People love it. Let me make you one to try.”
“No way!” I replied. “Josh, you don’t get it. It’s not just ethnically offensive in its name, it’s also gastronomically offensive. You can’t stick all of this weird stuff together in one sandwich—especially in this store. In our little corner of the world, we are the traditional appetizing store. A bagel with cream cheese and lox is the traditional sandwich. If you want to add a slice of tomato or onion to that combination, well, that’s about as crazy as you can get with this food.”
Josh listened quietly, nodded in apparent agreement, and then, as usual, ignored me.
While I considered whether to draw a line in the cream cheese and demand that Josh and Niki rename the sandwich, or perhaps reconsider their futures as smoked-fish-mongers, an issue of Time Out New York magazine appeared with a full-page photo of Russ & Daughters’ new Super Heeb sandwich. The magazine identified it as one of the great taste sensations in New York and named it an “Editor’s Pick.” I watched in disbelief as customers lined up to buy Super Heebs.
Among those who saw the Time Out article were Jeremy and Lisa, a couple from Boston. They had never visited the Lower East Side and decided to come for a weekend and sample the now-famous Super Heeb sandwich. They fell so in love with the sandwich, with Russ & Daughters, and with the Lower East Side that they decided to relocate to the neighborhood. They moved into a newly constructed luxury condominium on the corner of East Houston and Ludlow, one block from the store. The building has a concierge and a health club. (That location u
sed to be the parking lot where we kept the store van. Nowadays, the Lower East Side is so full of trendy buildings, we have to park in a lot that’s ten blocks away.) One day, Jeremy came in without Lisa. He ordered a Super Heeb and placed a diamond ring in the package. When he proposed, Lisa said yes.
My sense of outrage eventually changed to a sense of pride as the new generation began to make its mark: new products, new customers. In the Russ family, business trumps tradition. Josh and Niki ultimately agreed to a compromise. Their new, wildly successful creation is now known as the “Super Heebster.”
In spite of my going on and on about our food traditions and our ancestors rolling over in their graves, I, too, introduced new products over the years. These new items were added to accommodate changes in taste, because certain time-honored products were no longer available, and because I also understood that we had to keep things interesting for our customers.
Early on in my smoked-fish career, it became clear that the younger generation of smoked-fish eaters didn’t want bones in their fish. If they could, they would genetically engineer boneless fish. Smoked salmon, sturgeon, and sable were no problem, because they were sliced from fillets. But whitefish and chub sales were trending downward. The art of peeling the moist fish flesh away from the bone died with their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. The current generation seemed to be terrified of dying from—or at least choking on—fish bones. Which was why turning whitefish meat into a salad or spread was an immediate hit with all generations.
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