Yonah Shimmel's Knish Bakery

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For generations, food has always played a critical part of defining the culture of a people and perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the traditional Jewish restaurants and food emporiums on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Places such as Katz's Deli, Russ and Daughter's, Ratner's restaurant and the various pickle vendors have literally fed a tradition and left a soft spot in the hearts and stomachs of so many people. However, there is one place that perhaps more than others, has barely changed and still looks and smells exactly the way it did for as long as so many of us can remember. That place is Yonah Shimmel's Knish Bakery.

About 1890 Yonah Schimmel, a Jewish immigrant and part-time Hebrew teacher, used a pushcart to start his knish bakery on the Lower East Side, New York's traditional home to new immigrants. When business expanded, Yonah and his cousin, Joseph Berger, rented a small store on Houston Street. Two years later Yonah returned to teaching Hebrew, while Joseph and his wife (Yonah's daughter, Rose) took over the business, retaining the original name. In 1910 the Bergers moved the business to the opposite side of Houston Street, where it remains to this day, still under the family's management. While knishes vary with the maker, there are basically three guidelines for what makes a real Knish. It's got to be baked, never fried, and it's got to be handmade and filled with only real vegetables. At Schimmel's, knishes are baked in the basement of the store and brought up to customers on a dumbwaiter.

It is as much a landmark as an eatery and has frequently been an artist's subject and a portrait of the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery by Hedy Pagremanski (b. 1929) is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York.