Updated September 6, 2025 at 9:22 AM EDT
What's better on a weekend morning than savoring a lightly toasted bagel with lox and schmear while listening to Weekend Edition?
It's a tough combo to beat — but could perhaps be made even better by eating that bagel at Russ & Daughters, which has been on New York's Lower East Side for 114 years and also sells latkes, babka, rugelach, a dozen different kinds of salmon and is about the size of a subway car.
"Russ & Daughters for me was a literal mom and pop. Because it was my mom and pop," says Niki Russ Federman, who is a fourth generation co-owner of the family business.
"As a kid, I would wait at the doors for the produce delivery guys to come, and they would wheel in with their handcarts. They had sacks, 50 pound sacks of onions, carrots, potatoes. And I would climb on top … of the sack as if it were my chariot."
A partial family tree shows just how deep the family's roots run in the business: Niki Russ Federman's parents, Mark and Maria, inherited the shop from Mark's parents — Anne and Herb who also had a daughter, Tara. Tara didn't stay in the family business but did give birth to a son, Josh Russ Tupper, who is co-owner along with Niki.
Niki and Josh's grandmother, Anne, was one of three original "daughters" — her father was Joel Russ, the first Russ in Russ & Daughters.
From that rich history now comes a new cookbook, full of family lore, musings and recipes for matzo ball soup, noodle kugel, smoked trout mousse, Aunt Ida's stuffed cabbage and more. It's called: RUSS & DAUGHTERS: 100 Years of Appetizing.
And, that word — appetizing — makes the shop so special.
"We're not a deli," says Niki Russ Federman. "We're one of the last remaining appetizing stores. Both come from Jewish dietary laws. But a delicatessen, in its traditional form, is a place you go for smoked and cured meats. So think pastrami, corned beef, for example. And then the appetizing store is fresh fish and dairy."
Over a century ago, when Joel Russ founded his business, that fish was herring. "My great-grandfather's older sister was a herring maven," explains Josh Russ Tupper. Channah sponsored her little brother's immigration to New York from a small shtetl in Europe around the turn of the 20th century. Before Joel Russ was able to open a store, he sold schmaltz herring from a barrel on the street.
These days, the fish that draws locals and tourists alike to Russ & Daughters is the salmon. "I think that a bagel and lox is one of the literal tastes of New York," says Niki Russ Federman.
To get that classic taste, a handful of professional "slicers" — an official job title — work behind the counter slicing salmon so paper thin you might be able to read the fine print on a cell phone contract through it. "Once you get good it looks like it's easy," says Russ Federman, as she moves a sharp, slender knife across an opulently orange side of salmon, "but it's actually quite tough." It typically takes three months of practice before a Russ & Daughters slicer is fully trained. And it's not for show, either.
"The thinness of the slice with the proper angle gives you that subtlety of flavor that you just don't get with a thick slice or a machine cut slice," adds Niki Russ Federman. "It's definitely not the most practical or fast way to do it, but it's the best way."
For the family — and even for customers unfamiliar with the Yiddish expression — that is essentially what keeps Russ & Daughters haimish. "Haimish is a feeling as much as it is a philosophy," Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper write in their cookbook. "To us it means never straying far from our roots."
"Our food especially is the food of memory," says Niki Russ Federman. "It's through the food that you connect with others and you connect with who you are and where you come from … it's a time portal. It can transport you immediately to your past."
And at Russ & Daughters, the past is right outside the front door and around the corner on Orchard Street, where Joel Russ first sold herring from a barrel to his fellow immigrants, who populated the tenement buildings of the Lower East Side. After graduating to a pushcart, then a horse-and-wagon, Joel Russ eventually made enough money to open a shop of his own. Russ & Daughters was not its original name.
"One of the first names was Russ's Cut Rate Appetizing," says Niki Russ Federman. "If there had been a son, it probably would have been Russ & Sons." But Joel Russ had three daughters.
"Before I knew the word feminism," Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a 2014 interview, quoted in the cookbook, "seeing a sign for Russ & Daughters taught me that women could matter just like men in an enterprise."
Since taking over the business, Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper have added a bakery in Hudson Yards, a location in Brooklyn and a cafe, just a few blocks south of where their great-grandfather got his start.
"We created this restaurant to have the sit-down appetizing experience," says Josh Russ Tupper. "Really, the way you should eat this is four-plus people. Get your platter of smoked fish. Order from the whole menu."
On that menu: pickled herring trio, soft scrambled eggs with caviar, kasha varnishkas, borscht, and two kinds of babka French toast. One dish you won't find on that menu? Matzo brei.
"It was," explain Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper.
"It seems simple," they write in their cookbook. "Sheets of matzo, soaked in water, then dipped in eggs and fried in butter."
But it was driving everyone crazy.
"Turns out that the simplest dish is the hardest," says Niki Russ Federman. "Matzo brei was the bane of our existence."
Everyone who ordered it, the cousins explain, had a memory from their childhood of their matzo brei, or their grandmother's matzo brei, or their father's matzo brei. And they were all unhappy. "Because we could never match their taste memory," concludes Russ Federman.
So, while you will no longer find it on the menu, except around Passover, you can still sit down at Russ & Daughters Cafe and order matzo brei — if you're brave enough. They will happily make it for you, but it will be their way, with apologies to your Bubbe.
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