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Issue link: https://specialtyfoodmagazine.epubxp.com/i/139333
profile While Russ & Daughters' customer base is traditionally Jewish, with many people growing up with the store and continuing to travel to it from uptown Manhattan, New Jersey, Long Island and other surrounding areas, the Lower East Side has become gentrified over the years. Today's shoppers are not only former residents and tourists but hipsters and young professionals. "The neighborhood has changed but our food is widely appealing," Josh says. Herring, for example, a mainstay of Russ & Daughters' menu, is enjoying a resurgence, in part due to its healthful properties and partly because of nostalgia. "Young people seem to be looking into history and want to understand what immigrants ate," he says. "People come in already curious about what they should try and we just do what we do." The Russ & Daughters Experience What they do is best described as the Russ & Daughters experience by anyone who has frequented the store. Customers take a number upon entering a space that is narrow but pristine, with rows of smoked and cured fish and salads meticulously displayed along one long counter while another across the aisle houses halvah, dried "We realize that 100 years of history in one place is meaningful and has a lot of currency. We need to preserve that." —Niki Russ Federman fruits, chocolates and baked goods. Shelves are lined with caviar and assorted specialty groceries. Counter workers wearing white lab coats slice fish like artisans while waiting on a seemingly continuous line of customers. Despite the long lines, the staff 's focus isn't to move customers out as quickly as possible. They work deliberately and efficiently but take time and attention with each order, whether deboning a fish or wrapping a sandwich, and offer samples and guide shoppers through a selection of salmon (including pastrami-cured, which uses the same seasonings as in curing pastrami, hence the name), sable, stur- Summer Fancy Food Show Booth 4522 52 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com