Everything New Is Old Again

By Julia Moskin for the New York Times

Artisanal gefilte fish. Slow-fermented bagels. Organic chopped liver. Sustainable schmaltz.

These aren’t punch lines to a fresh crop of Jewish jokes. They are real foods that recently arrived on New York City’s food scene. And they are proof of a sudden and strong movement among young cooks, mostly Jewish-Americans, to embrace and redeem the foods of their forebears. That’s why, at this moment in 21st-century New York, the cutting edge of cuisine is the beet-heavy, cabbage-friendly, herring-loving diet of 19th-century Jews in Eastern Europe.

“It turns out that our ancestors knew what they were doing,” said Jeffrey Yoskowitz, an owner of Gefilteria, a company that makes unorthodox versions of gefilte fish and is branching out into slow-brined pickles and strudel. “The recipes and techniques are almost gone, and we have to capture the knowledge before it’s lost.”

The wave that began with Gefilteria, the Mile End delis, Shelsky’s of Brooklyn and Kutsher’s Tribeca has suddenly crested, with three places opening in the last month. Black Seed Bagels, a brick-oven bakery from the owners of Mile End, features toppings like horseradish cream cheese, beet-cured salmon and watermelon radishes. Baz Bagel & Restaurant, a cheerful Minsk-to-Miami venture, offers bread pudding made from babka, lemon-scented blintzes and hand-rolled pumpernickel-everything bagels. And Russ & Daughters Cafe serves the store’s legendary smoked fish and herring alongside remixed classics like whitefish chowder and halvah ice cream with salted caramel.

The chefs and artisans behind these new enterprises are embracing the quickly disappearing foods of their grandparents — blintzes and babka, kasha and knishes — and jolting them back to strength with an infusion of modern culinary ideas. Those foods became punch lines in the 1970s, when the health consequences of a steady diet of meat, salt, bread and cream became apparent, and when strong, smelly foods like garlic dill pickles and herring with raw onion seemed dated, even embarrassing. “Food rejection was part of the assimilation process,” said Devra Ferst, editor of the food blog The Jew & The Carrot.

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