Finally, it is the story of the Russ family, tracing their roots from the shtetl of Strzyov, Poland to the opening of the store in New York in 1914, all the way to the present, with an inside look into the challenges of keeping a multi-generational family business going.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the U.S., less than 1% of family businesses make it to a fourth generation, so we are in a small club,\u201d Federman said. (Most sources say 3%<\/a>, but that\u2019s still pretty low.)<\/p>\n The seeds for \u201cRuss & Daughters: 100 Years of Appetizing\u201d<\/a> were planted in 2020, during the dark months of the COVID-19 lockdown.Their mail-order business thrived during the pandemic, and remains a significant source of revenue today.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pandemic heightened our awareness that Russ & Daughters exists way beyond its footprint or our physical spaces,\u201d Federman said. \u201cPeople want to connect to Russ & Daughters even if they are at home in Oregon. How do we do that? Bagels are perishable but a book isn\u2019t. The book is a way to allow people to connect and extend that experience in their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Russ & Daughters traces its roots to 1907 \u2014 118 years ago \u2014 when Federman and Tupper\u2019s immigrant great-grandfather, Joel Russ, began peddling schmaltz herring from a barrel on the Lower East Side before upgrading to a pushcart.<\/p>\n In 1914, Russ opened Russ\u2019s Cut Rate Appetizing \u2014 originally J. Russ National Appetizing \u2014 at 187 Orchard St., a small slip of a shop from which he sold pickled herring, dried Polish mushrooms called borowik and smoked whitefish. A few years later, the intensely salty belly lox \u2014 salmon that was caught on the West Coast, filleted, packed in salt to preserve it and shipped East \u2014 joined the roster.<\/p>\n The cover of the new Russ & Daughters book, and a historic photo of the appetizing shop, which opened in 1914 moved to 179 East Houston St. in 1920, where it remains in business today. (Courtesy Flatiron Books; courtesy Russ & Daughters; design by Jackie Hajdenberg)<\/p>\n \u201cThe classic appetizing trio of bagel, cream cheese and lox came about because the original lox was so salty that you needed the dairy of the cream cheese and the bread of the bagel to mellow it out,\u201d Federman said. \u201cBagel and lox is a purely American and New York invention that has come to symbolize New York and become so common. It speaks to the Jewish American experience of being in a new place and trying to have a connection to the tastes and flavors of home but also having to work with the ingredients and the new culture.\u201d<\/p>\n By 1920, Russ moved to 179 East Houston Street, where the business remains today. He changed the name a few years later, to Russ & Daughters, iconoclastic for a time when \u201cdaughters\u201d was never included in a business name.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might have been Russ & Son, but the first child, Morris, died of typhoid shy of his second birthday,\u201d Federman said. Later, Russ had three daughters \u2014 Hattie, Ida, and Anne \u2014 who all worked at the shop and eventually became full partners.<\/p>\n Over the decades, Russ & Daughters expanded their product line to include tinned fish, sweets, halvah, breads, soups and a variety of preserved fish and fish roe. But through it all, as Tupper writes in the cookbook, \u201cWe\u2019ve tried to keep all innovation unobtrusive.\u201d<\/p>\n As Tupper, 50, explains, the store\u2019s innovations have been subtle, honoring the food traditions of Ashkenazi Jews while also evolving\u00a0 to satisfy modern tastes. Take Russ & Daughters\u2019 Gasp\u00e9 Nova, which the cousins describe in the book as \u201cthe archetypal New York style lox.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started 23 years ago, Gasp\u00e9 was the most popular salmon and it was fatty, silky and mild,\u201d Tupper said, adding that in response to customers\u2019 changing tastes, \u201cit has gotten smokier, silkier and less mild.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no instructions on how to smoke your own fish in \u201cRuss & Daughters: 100 Years of Appetizing.\u201d But there is\u00a0 a recipe on how to assemble Daughters\u2019 Delight, one of the cafe\u2019s most popular sandwiches, made with cream cheese, capers, Gasp\u00e9, red onion, sliced tomato and salmon roe. Other recipe highlights in the book include kasha varnishkes, mushroom barley soup and chocolate babka.<\/p>\n Russ & Daughters is celebrating the release of the book with a host of events, including Russ & Daughters Day<\/a> on Sept. 20, a day of free events including walking tours, giveaways and discussions, planned in conjunction with local indie bookstore P&T Knitwear<\/a>. Federman and Tupper will also make an appearance at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center on Thursday, Sept. 11<\/a>, and they also have speaking engagements in other cities, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/9-8-25-Russ-and-Daughters-copy-2.jpg\")
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