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Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery is a bakery and restaurant, located at 137 East Houston Street (between First Avenue and Second Avenue), in the Lower East Side,
About 1890, Yonah Schimmel, a Romanian immigrant, used a pushcart to start his knish bakery. As business grew, a small store on Houston Street was rented by Yonah and his cousin Joseph Berger. When Yonah left the business a few years later, Berger took over the business, retaining the original name. In 1910, the Bergers moved the business to the south side of Houston Street, at its current location. Yonah Schimmel's has been family owned since its inception and is currently operated by Yonah's great nephew, Alex Wolfman.
In 1995, the shop's then-owner, Sheldon Keitz, was implicated in a 
It is as much a landmark as an eatery and has frequently been an artist's subject. A portrait of the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery by Hedy Pagremanski (b. 1929) is in the permanent collection of the
Official website
1890 establishments in New York (state) Ashkenazi Jewish restaurants Ashkenazi Jewish culture in New York City Bakeries of the United States Jewish delicatessens in the United States Jews and Judaism in Manhattan Kosher bakeries Milchig restaurants Restaurants in Manhattan Romanian-Jewish culture in New York (state) Restaurants established in 1890 {{Restaurants in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, that has been selling knish
A knish is a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish snack food consisting of a filling covered with dough that is typically baked or sometimes deep fried.
Knishes are often purchased from street vendors in urban areas with a large Jewish population, some ...
es on the Lower East Side since 1890. Its current location on Houston Street
Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River i ...
opened in 1910.
As the Lower East Side has changed over the decades and many of its Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ish residents have departed, Yonah Schimmel's is one of the few distinctly Jewish businesses and restaurants that remain as a fixture of this largely departed culture and cuisine.
As cited in ''The Underground Gourmet,'' a review of Yonah Schimmel's in a collection of restaurant reviews by Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929June 26, 2020) was an American graphic designer. His most notable designs include the I Love New York logo, a 1966 poster for Bob Dylan, and the logos for DC Comics, Stony Brook University and Brooklyn Brewery. In 195 ...
and Jerome Snyder
Jerome Snyder (1916 – May 2, 1976) was an American illustrator and graphic designer. He is best known as the first art director of the magazine ''Sports Illustrated'' and as the co-author of the popular New York City Restaurant rating, restaurant ...
, "No New York politician in the last 50 years has been elected to office without having at least one photograph showing him on the Lower East Side with a knish in his face."
History
About 1890, Yonah Schimmel, a Romanian immigrant, used a pushcart to start his knish bakery. As business grew, a small store on Houston Street was rented by Yonah and his cousin Joseph Berger. When Yonah left the business a few years later, Berger took over the business, retaining the original name. In 1910, the Bergers moved the business to the south side of Houston Street, at its current location. Yonah Schimmel's has been family owned since its inception and is currently operated by Yonah's great nephew, Alex Wolfman.
In 1995, the shop's then-owner, Sheldon Keitz, was implicated in a loan-sharking
A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law.
Description
Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably ...
scheme. The shop was amongst the locations where loans were repaid.
It is as much a landmark as an eatery and has frequently been an artist's subject. 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
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...
. Jewish-Irish painter Harry Kernoff
Harry Aaron Kernoff (9 January 1900 – 25 December 1974) was an Irish genre-painter. He depicted Dublin street and pub scenes and Dublin landmarks, as well as producing landscapes, woodcut illustrations, portraits, and set designs.
Early ...
painted this bakery on a trip to New York in 1939. More recently it features in the 2009 Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
film ''Whatever Works
''Whatever Works'' is a 2009 American comedy film directed and written by Woody Allen and starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Michael McKean, and Henry Cavill. It was released on June 19, 2009, received mi ...
''.
The restaurant offers a number of varieties of knishes, including the traditional potato and kasha
In English, kasha usually refers to pseudocereal buckwheat or its culinary preparations. In various East-Central and Eastern European countries, ''kasha'' can apply to any kind of cooked grain. It can be baked but most often is boiled, either i ...
( buckwheat groats) knishes, known for using the same recipe since the bakery's opening, in addition to other kinds of Eastern European food such as borscht
Borscht () is a sour soup common in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. In English, the word "borscht" is most often associated with the soup's variant of Ukrainian origin, made with red beetroots as one of the main ingredients, which g ...
, and runs a takeout business.`In recent years the restaurant has delivered its knishes nationally through Goldbelly, and has been featured in the site's Youtube series.
See also
* List of Ashkenazi Jewish restaurants *List of bakeries
This is a list of notable bakeries. A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cakes, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers ...
* List of delicatessens
* List of kosher restaurants
* Jews in New York City
Jews in New York City comprise approximately 9 percent of the New York City, city's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel. , 1.6 million Jews lived in the five boroughs of New York City, boroughs of ...
*
*
References
External links
Official website
1890 establishments in New York (state) Ashkenazi Jewish restaurants Ashkenazi Jewish culture in New York City Bakeries of the United States Jewish delicatessens in the United States Jews and Judaism in Manhattan Kosher bakeries Milchig restaurants Restaurants in Manhattan Romanian-Jewish culture in New York (state) Restaurants established in 1890 {{Restaurants in Manhattan