Our Lower East Side Food tour began on East Houston Street at Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery. Since 1910 this place has been serving knishes. It looks there may have been one remodel done in the 1950's. We ordered a potato knish, as seen below, divided into quarters and sampled.
It tastes like mashed potatoes in the center of a baked bun, slightly like a biscuit. At $2.80 it wasn't an indulgence but having had one, that may do it for me. There are many more tasty ways of consuming calories.
Barely a block away is Russ & Daughters. The attraction here are bagels. There a good size and fresh and tasty. However, at this place you can build your bagel into a real expensive meal. We ordered a plain bagel with chive cream cheese, Gaspe smoked salmon and onions and capers.
I've never seen so many smoked salmon choices. The stuff from Scotland is most expensive. At around $12 this was an indulgence. The salmon had a delicate flavor and you could easily bite it apart.
Same street and one more block away is the famous Katz Deli. Here there is a proper procedure in procuring your sandwich and experience.
Upon entering you are given a ticket. The ticket is presented every time you get food or drink so it can be marked. When leaving the ticket is collected and your meal is tallied up. I don't know what happens when you lose your ticket. You may sit and get waitress service, but only in the tables along the wall. Otherwise you get in line at the sandwich counter, tell the sandwich man what you want. We chose a pastrami sandwich on rye. The sandwich man slices a piece and lets you sample it. The meat is cut about 1/4 inch thick and just falls apart. It is tradition to place a one dollar bill in the sandwich man's tip cup. It looked like there was already $100 in it. The sandwich comes with some fresh pickles. For drinks, you get in another line for soda etc or go to the kitchen sink in the back with glasses marked clean, and pour some water from the tap. Remember we are in NYC and the tap water is good, fresh from upstate New York reservoirs.
The walls are covered with photos of celebs, all on premise photos, no stock photos.
Next stop is Ray's Candy Store. I got an Egg Cream which appears to be carbonated water and chocolate syrup. And that is what it tasted like. The real hit here was the frozen yogurt. Seen here is pistachio.
"Truth Justice and the Comics" I think Ray might be a bit of an oddball.
Prosperity Dumpling is a bargain. You get 5 pork dumplings for $1. We also got a sesame pancake for $1. It tasted like a funnel cake.
We needed to sit down, so we ordered our juicy pork buns at Old Sichuan to be served at the table with hot tea. These pork buns were very good but also very filling. Dipped in soy sauce and handled with chopsticks, it was also fun. One of the fortune cookies here read:
"A good way to keep healthy is to eat more Chinese Food"
At the Chinatown Ice Cream factory we got 15% butterfat ice cream in Chinese flavors. I went for the Lychee.
One final stop on Friday's tour is New Beef King. Beef Jerky made daily. I got oyster flavored jerky, fruit flavored, spicy hot beef and pork. It was not chewy like most jerky.
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