Guss' Pickles

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Guss' Pickles is a famous pickles vendor located on the Lower East Side of New York City. Considered one of New York's cultural landmarks, and for many years located on Hester Street, it is often included as a site of interest in tours of the Lower East Side, much as is Katz's Deli and Kossar's Bialys. As a wholesaler, Guss pickles was also a major purveyor of pickles to many of the hotels in the Catskills and Las Vegas while the storefront on Hester Street served as the focal point for its retail operations

From an open storefront, Guss' vendors sell different types of pickled goods (including four varieties of pickles) straight out of huge barrels. They also sell sweet peppers, hot cherry peppers, giardiniera, marinated mushrooms, pickled tomatoes, sauerkraut, olives, horseradish, sweet relish, pickled celery and more. The men and women, wearing thick sweatshirts advertising the store, scoop out large bowls of pickles and cram them into quart containers for the often long line of people on the sidewalk.

Guss' Pickles was also featured in the movie Crossing Delancey.

[edit] History

Guss' Pickles was founded by a Polish immigrant, Izzy Guss. Guss arrived in New York in 1910, and like hundreds of thousands of other Jewish immigrants, settled in the Lower East Side. Like many of his fellow immigrants, Guss rented a pushcart and sold produce - including his now famous pickles - on the Lower East Side. Clustered in the "pickle district" of Essex and Ludlow streets, early 20th century pickle vendors gave birth to what would be known as "New York style" pickles.

Guss at first worked for L. Hollander and Sons, before later opening his own store. At the time, the neighborhood was teeming with 80 other pickle shops. However, immigration restrictions, a ban on pushcarts and the steady economic decline of the Lower East Side felled almost all of these shops.

Guss' Pickles survived these fallow times and now stands as the last holdover from the days of the Essex Street empire. In 1979, Harry Baker and his partner Burt Blitz took over Guss' Pickles. Through the 1980s and into the 2000s, Baker and his son Tim ran the store. Few people know Guss' secret recipe, purportedly kept in a safety-deposit box in a Jacksonville, Florida bank, which was handed down from Guss through Baker's predecessor and mentor, Sol Kaplan. Then a high school student, Tim Baker - now the general manager - learned the secret flavors of pickling: coriander, mustard seed, bay leaves, peppercorns, red peppers and garlic.

In 2006, Tim sold his ownership of Guss' Pickles and left a legal mess in its wake. A buyer in Woodmere, NY claims to have bought the name Guss' Pickles from Tim, while the actual store, which moved from its historic location on Essex Street to a storefront within the Lower East Side Tenement Museum was sold to someone else. The two parties are now battling in court for the rights to the name Guss' Pickles ^[1]