“[The knish] was a conduit to a better life and a different social status,” Silver says. Knishes first started showing up on Lower East Side around 1910, when Yonah Schimmel reportedly opened on Houston Street. In 1916, the New York Times reported from the front lines of the Lower East Side’s knish scene. In an early instance of Times reporting on the food, an article titled “Rivington St. Sees War” covered a long lost place called Max Green’s, which it deemed “the originator of the great knish” and the first to sell it. Knisheries opened up wherever Jews moved, from Shatzkin’s in Coney Island to Adelman’s in Midwood to Knish Nosh in Forest Hills. People like Wildman and Silver attach a profound importance to the knish. To see why more people don’t, I turned to Jim Leff, the founder of Chowhound and a retired food obsessive who once catalogued outer borough eats.
