For National Daughters Day, a Visit to Russ & Daughters

It’s National Daughter’s Day, and where better to go on this day to find something “appetizing” than Russ & Daughters on Houston Street on the Lower East Side.

That neon sign is certainly very appetizing, too, but in this use, appetizing means foods like lox and spreads that go with a bagel.

No meat please — you’d get that at another kind of store, the delicatessen.

Appetizing shops were once as common as Starbucks in this town, but no more, though Russ & Daughters is doing a fine job of expanding them again, including a beautiful cafe nearby. Joel Russ started it all, a Polish immigrant who had a barrel of herring and a dream.

Yes, his business started out of a barrel on the street in the Lower East Side after her arrived in 1907. By 1920, it moved here, its second physical location after years of selling from a pushcart and later a horse-drawn wagon. His daughters were brought into the business as kids — the shop says it was the first business to use the phrase “and daughters” in America.

There had surely been plenty of “and sons” before that. They kept it going for decades, and it’s still in the family.

This is another iconic Lower East Side place, like Katz’s Delicatessen, that’s impossible to photograph — it’s a successful business and there are often lines outside or iPhone zombies who won’t move for the life of them. I was lucky to get this shot a few years ago.

Pretty appetizing, huh?