"I go to the Food Emporium and I buy gefilte fish and borscht.
In 1954, the company opened a plant in Vineland, in South Jersey, where it continues to make gefilte fish and borscht.
But, underperformers like gefilte fish (and borscht) notwithstanding, something quite remarkable has happened in the unsexy world of kosher food.
At the time, it had $1.5 billion in annual sales and exported its products, from gefilte fish to borscht, around the world.
The popularity of Jewish food, at least a more upscale version, is celebrated at a number of new restaurants in New York, and now a trio of Brooklynites have started a "pushcart start-up" called Gefilteria, selling items like gefilte fish and borscht that's locally sourced.
Mostly older Russian immigrants, they would step down from ambulettes and into one of two Parkshore adult day care centers in Brooklyn to use the beauty parlors, watch Russian-language television and dine on food specifically chosen to attract them: herring, gefilte fish and borscht.
In one corner stood black cast-iron pots containing two types of shchi (one with meat, the other with mushrooms); the ukha, with its three kinds of fish; and the borscht.
Brighton Beach Avenue, with its Cyrillic-lettered signs, dowdy clothing stores and grocery stores selling mountains of sausages, pickled vegetables, smoked fish and prepared borscht and pirogi, all in the cool shadows of the elevated subway tracks, had the feel of a shtetl.
Enjoy a bagel and smoked fish, or knishes, borscht, salads and much more in this kosher 70-seat, sit-down restaurant that also serves wine, beer and cocktails.
Later, after taping the Charlie Rose show and an MSNBC program, Safin was gulping caffeinated soda at the Russian Tea Room, picking at the smoked fish and avoiding the borscht.
