Russ & Daughters
- Getting there
- East Houston Street, Lower East Side
Why it’s in the log
Russ & Daughters opened in 1907 as a pushcart and has been run by the same family for four generations since. Anthony Bourdain featured it in "Disappearing Manhattan," a No Reservations episode built around the parts of New York that were vanishing under redevelopment — he sat down with owner Mark Russ Federman, ordered herring in cream sauce and a lox-and-cream-cheese bagel, and used the shop as a case for what the city stood to lose.
It's an appetizing store first — smoked and cured fish, not deli meat — and the counter still runs on the same order-and-wait system generations of regulars know by heart. The bagels and lox draw the tourists; the whitefish salad and the sable are what keeps locals coming back.
Take a number, expect a line on weekends, and order more than you think you need — everything here keeps.
“A shop this old shouldn't still feel this alive — it's the kind of place Bourdain built a whole episode around defending.”
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