“It’s a matter of communication, branding,” van Ravestein posited.
“You tell the story,” Mulder added. “The food is an interface that is also your legacy.”
Van Ravestein munched on a half-sour and recalled an article, from 1890, that likened pickles to alcohol or coffee: “So kids couldn’t eat them, because it gives you a kick.”
Russ Federman mentioned a contemporary listicle of ten “superfoods,” most of which were sold at her store: “It’s herring, sardines, salmon, sauerkraut, liver—caviar was on the list!”
“You know what we had yesterday evening?” Mulder asked, as she sipped a shrub (pickled-beet juice and vinegar, popular with the marathon-runner set). “A vermouth with pickle juice.”
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’s Super Bowl halftime-show sharks.
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. “I was, like, ‘This for sure will last me forever. It’ll be a gimmick,’ ” she told the Dutch duo. A year later, her shop was bursting at the seams, and she kept selling out of pickles. “People had been putting it on TikTok,” she said. Altshuler had to outsource pickle production upstate, and began cranking out pickle merch. “All of a sudden, Harry Styles was wearing it,” she said. “It was a whole drama.”
Mulder and van Ravestein mentioned the frenzy surrounding the Heinz pickle pin, a coveted souvenir at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
“People are obsessed with pickles!” Altshuler said. “People come in and say, ‘Oh, look at my pickle tattoo,’ or, ‘My dog’s name is Pickle.’ ”
“In Holland, a lot of young people, they’ve started fermenting at home,” Mulder added.
The Sweet Pickle Books building—near where “Lower East Side cool girlies” (per Altshuler) had dumpster-dived for Timothée Chalamet’s old “Marty Supreme” costumes—has been in its landlady’s family for a century and a half. Altshuler said, “Her grandfather sold melons from a pushcart outside.” ♦