Join the 4th Generation of the Russ family for a talk/tasting: part of the Festival of Ideas for the New City. Saturday, May 7 at 2 pm and 4 pm in front of Russ & Daughters, 179 East Houston Street (between Orchard Street and Allen Street on the Lower East Side).
The festival organizers write: “The Festival of Ideas for the New City is a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to effect change. A first for New York, the Festival will harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place in multiple venues Downtown and is organized around three central programs: a conference of symposia; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery; and over one hundred independent projects and public events. The Festival will serve as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate.”
Purveyors of the highest quality smoked fish, caviar, and specialty foods, Russ & Daughters is New York’s premier appetizing shop. Since 1914, this landmark New York institution has been continuously owned and operated by four generations of the Russ family. In the same spot on East Houston Street, and run by the same family, for nearly a century, Russ & Daughters continues to provide the tastes, traditions, and old-world class of a true New York experience.
When Joel Russ started peddling herring from a pushcart, could he have imagined a time when the fourth generation of the Russ family would walk, daily, into a landmark appetizing shop hailed by the Smithsonian Institute, the National Register of Historic Places, The New York Times, Gourmet, Martha Stewart, NPR, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, PBS, The Food Network, The Travel Channel, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue — among many esteemed others — for its contribution to New York’s culinary and historical landscape?
Joel Russ, an Eastern European immigrant who arrived in America in 1907, started the business from a pushcart to cater to the throngs of Jewish immigrants settling in New York’s Lower East Side district. In 1920, he opened his store at 179 East Houston Street, after a few years of operating out of a storefront around the corner. In 1933, he renamed the business “Russ & Daughters,” after his three daughters who joined him in the business. Mark Russ Federman succeeded as the 3rd Generation, and is now retired, and at work on his forthcoming memoir. The business is now owned and operated by the 4th Generation of the Russ family: Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper.
For more Russ & Daughters history, please visit our website, or, of course, stop by and see us in the shop.
