“I kind of concluded early on that [knishes] weren’t for me, and left them alone,” Wells told me. “I have no use for the turmeric-colored ones sold out of hot dog carts, and this is coming from a man who at one point in his life ate a single hot pretzel with mustard for lunch every day.”
Though Wells enjoyed the ones from Yonah Schimmel’s more than the street cart knishes, he said he never craved them enough to make the store into a regular stop when he lived on the Lower East Side. But what if, I asked him, you had discovered a knish like the one at Russ & Daughters earlier in life? Or had took the subway to Knish Knosh in Queens, Ms. Stahl’s, or had even met the famed Ruby, whose specter haunts the internet and inspired a devoted Facebook group? Would you be singing a different song?
“Oh for sure,” Wells responded. “If I’d met a knish like that in my formative years there’s no telling what might have happened.”
