The House that Herring Built (Russ & Daughters nickname)
Russ & Daughters is an appetizing store located at 179 East Houston Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, that opened in 1914. The Russ & Daughters nickname of “The House that Herring Built” was popularized in the title of a book by Mark Russ Federman, Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House that Herring Built (2013).
Russ & Daughters has also been called “The Louvre of Lox” since 2002.
Wikipedia: Russ & Daughters
Russ & Daughters is an appetizing store opened in 1914. It is located at 179 East Houston Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. A family-operated store, it has been at the same location since 1914.
Russ & Daughters
22 December 2002
The Sunday Times of London
Troubled Stars Find Comfort in Caviar
By Dominic Rushe
Anybody who is anybody buys their smoked salmon from Russ & Daughters. The shop, which first opened its doors on the lower east side of Manhattan in 1914, is the Louvre of lox. Russ’s is a tiny shop with a big staff. White mosaic floors and wall of pictures showing every Russ ever to slice salmon complete the shop’s old-fashioned look. But it is the food that people come for. Rose- pink Alaska belly lox, sunset-red Wild Western Nova, caviar, housed-cured herrings. With so much fine food coming through its doors, it’s no wonder that Russ’s is a magnet for the Manhattan’s muckety-mucks. Mark Russ Federman, grandson of the shop’s founder, Joel Russ, has been running the shop since 1978 and is unarguably the world’s best-connected smoked-salmon seller. The holidays season has been hell, says Federman. “We just can’t keep up.” People who wouldn’t wait in line for an audience with the Queen queue quietly out the door to get into Russ’s.
The Daily Meal
November 17, 2011
Calvin Trillin on Russ & Daughters
Much Ado About Noshing: GutterGourmet recounts Calvin Trillin’s kibitz with Russ & Daughters
By GutterGourmet
I recently attended the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s Much Ado About Noshing event at the Astor Center featuring New Yorker writer Calvin “Bud” Trillin and two of the four generations of family members that have continuously owned and operated Russ & Daughters, the world-famous Lower East Side appetizer, for more than 100 years.
The third generation was represented by Mark Russ Federman, a “reformed” lawyer who left law to run R & D (which also stands for “Herring Research and Development”). Mark is writing the hotly anticipated history of Russ & Daughters and his family, which bears the working title The House That Herring Built.
OCLC WorldCat record
Russ & Daughters : reflections and recipes from the house that herring built
Author: Mark Russ Federman
Publisher: New York : Schocken Books, ©2013.
Edition/Format: Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
When Joel Russ started peddling herring from a barrel shortly after his arrival in America from Poland, he could not have imagined that he was giving birth to a gastronomic legend. Here is the story of this “Louvre of lox” (The Sunday Times, London): its humble beginnings, the struggle to keep it going during the Great Depression, the food rationing of World War II, the passing of the torch to the next generation as the flight from the Lower East Side was beginning, the heartbreaking years of neighborhood blight, and the almost miraculous renaissance of an area from which hundreds of other family-owned stores had fled. Mark Russ Federman’s reminiscences combine a heartwarming and triumphant immigrant saga with a panoramic history of twentieth-century New York, a meditation on the creation and selling of gourmet food, and an enchanting behind-the-scenes look at four generations of people who are just a little bit crazy on the subject of fish.—From publisher description.
Specialty Food Magazine (July-August 2013)
Russ & Daughters:
A New York Institution
Approaching its 100th birthday, this authentic Jewish appetizing store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side looks to bridge the past and future under the direction of its fourth generation of owners.
By DENISE PURCELL
It’s been called a national treasure, a living museum, the House that Herring Built and the Louvre of Lox, but it is most often referred to as a New York institution. Russ & Daughters has operated for nearly a century on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In a neighborhood where dozens of similar merchants once flourished, it is one of the few old-style appetizing stores that still exists in the city, specializing in smoked and cured fish, caviar, bagels, baked goods and food gifts.