There might’ve been something else, though, that held the knish back. I reached out to Leff because of comments he made for a 2003 New York Times article about the disappearance of street knishes. The knishes in question are popularly known as the Coney Island knish, square-shaped and deep-fried specimens that are turmeric-yellow in color. They were invented on Forsyth Street on the Lower East Side in 1921 and continue to be produced by the family company, Gabila’s, in Copiague in Suffolk County.
The company was very successful and their knishes became widespread in delis and at hot dog carts, so much so that when many modern New Yorkers say “knish,” they mean Gabilla’s. When the company’s factory caught fire in 2013, alarmist headlines declared a knish shortage and famine.
But some, including Leff, just don’t care for Gabilla’s. As he tells it, these mass-produced knishes are pretenders to the throne, which by right belongs to the one true knish: the baked, handmade variety with far more delicious fillings, which he calls, for lack of a better term, the ur-knish.
