Nostalgia
My Jewish food & history tour of the lower east side.
A curated itinerary.
The perfect self-guided one or two days on the lower east side. 19+ stops. Pace yourself.
When I did this, it was a 2-3 mile walk.
start here
1. Nine Orchard Hotel / Jarmulowsky Bank
9 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
This is one of my favorite hidden-history stops. Today's luxury Nine Orchard occupies the spectacular 1912 Jarmulowsky Bank Building, founded by Jewish immigrant banker Sender Jarmulowsky. Immigrant customers deposited savings here and bought steamship tickets to bring relatives to America.
LOOK UP: The restored rooftop tempietto and the name Jarmulowsky carved into the building. Start with coffee and breakfast at the hotel's restaurant and enjoy the beauty.
BONUS: Peek into the restored former banking hall, now the Swan Room.
2. Michaeli Bakery
115A Division Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded by Israeli baker Adir Michaeli, who previously worked at Tel Aviv's Lehamim and was part of the opening team at Breads Bakery. The LES shop opened in 2019.
TRY: Babka, rugelach or bourekas. My favorite savory treat in NYC is their Pizza Boureka. Ask that they heat them up for you.
2nd Location: 401 East 90th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
3. Elbow Bread
1 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
The new Lower East Side interpreting the old Lower East Side. Zoë Kanan opened it in 2024, taking Jewish breads and pastries such as bialys, challah, rugelach and knishes and giving them a contemporary spin.
LOOK FOR: How traditional Jewish bakery foods have been reimagined rather than simply reproduced.
4. Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Museum at Eldridge Street occupies the magnificent 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first grand synagogue purpose-built in the U.S. by Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
LOOK FOR: The extraordinary stained glass and restored sanctuary. The contemporary east window by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans is especially worth finding.
PACE YOURSELF: Exterior if you're doing the quick version; allow roughly an hour if you go inside.
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5. Forward Building
173–175 East Broadway, Lower East Side, Manhattan
One of the great physical remnants of Yiddish New York: former headquarters of the Jewish Daily Forward.
LOOK UP: Don't just photograph the building. Look at the façade for the historic lettering and sculpted figures. The building and Jarmulowsky Bank were both completed in 1912 and represented two very different sides of immigrant Jewish life -the socialist newspaper and the capitalist bank.
6. Kehila Kedosha Janina
280 Broome Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum tells a Jewish story many visitors don't know: the Romaniote Jews of Greece, rather than the neighborhood's better-known Eastern European Jewish history. It is the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.
LOOK FOR: The modest 1927 façade at 280 Broome Street. If you can visit when the museum is open, its collection includes traditional objects and distinctive hand-painted Romaniote birth certificates called Alefs.
7. Kossar's
367 Grand St, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Kossar's Bagels & Bialys dates to 1936 and describes itself as the oldest operating bialy bakery in the United States. The bialy came to the Lower East Side with Jewish immigrants from Poland.
TRY: Onion bialy is the classic but try Kossar’s famous flagel, a flattened bagel that’s thinner and crispier than a traditional bagel, with more crust in every bite. It’s especially delicious toasted with cream cheese or your favorite schmear.
PACE YOURSELF: Share. There is a lot more food coming.
10. Bialystoker Synagogue
7–11 Bialystoker Place (Willett Street), Lower East Side, Manhattan
THIS is an unexpected NYC history stop. The congregation occupies an 1826 former Methodist church built of Manhattan schist. It became the synagogue in 1905.
LOOK FOR: The beautiful Federal-era exterior. Inside, a concealed opening in the women's gallery leads by ladder to an attic. Synagogue tradition holds that the former church sheltered people escaping slavery as part of the Underground Railroad.
8. Pickle Guys
357 Grand St, Lower East Side, Manhattan
The Pickle Guys is the last remaining pickle store around Essex Street, once packed with pickle merchants. Their pickles are still barrel-cured in salt brine using an Eastern European-style tradition.
LOOK FOR: The barrels.
TRY: One classic sour pickle while you walk. Around Passover, they also continue the old neighborhood tradition of grinding fresh horseradish outside.
Buy their tote bag for a fun souvenir.
11. Essex Market
88 Essex Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Essex Market is a wonderful piece of Lower East Side history.
Essex Market traces its roots to 1818, when a public market operated on nearby Grand Street. In 1940, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia opened the Essex Street Municipal Market at 120 Essex Street, moving street pushcart vendors, many of them Jewish and Italian immigrants, into permanent indoor stalls. For generations, it served as an important shopping destination for the Lower East Side’s immigrant communities. In 2019, the market moved across Delancey Street to its modern home at 88 Essex Street, where independent food vendors continue the neighborhood’s culinary traditions.
GOOD TO KNOW: The market is open to the public, with an upstairs seating area and regular community programming. Individual vendor hours vary.
HOURS: Monday–Wednesday 8 AM–8 PM; Thursday–Saturday 8 AM–9 PM; Sunday 10 AM–6 PM.
9. Moishe's
504 Grand St, Lower East Side, Manhattan
A longtime kosher Jewish bakery on the Lower East Side, Moishe’s is known for traditional Eastern European Jewish baked goods, including challah, rugelach, babka, hamantaschen and rye bread. Its old-fashioned storefront and classic recipes are reminders of the Jewish bakeries that once filled the neighborhood, serving generations of immigrant families and their descendants.
LOOK FOR: The storefront and the feeling of a disappearing Lower East Side bakery tradition.
Watch the video of Moishe's on our home page
12. Tenement Museum
103 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
The immigrant story behind everything you're eating. The museum interprets the lives of actual families who lived in Lower East Side tenements and now also offers food experiences exploring the neighborhood's immigrant cuisines.
You can also take tours of the historic apartments, and join food tours.
13. Blue Moon Hotel / Sweet Dreams Café
100 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Built in 1879 as a tenement, the Blue Moon Hotel was restored and reopened in 2006 by Jewish artist Randy Settenbrino as a tribute to the Lower East Side’s immigrant history. The hotel features historic photographs, Yiddish theater posters, Jewish memorabilia and rooms named after entertainers such as Molly Picon and Eddie Cantor. On the ground floor, Sweet Dreams Café serves kosher Italian food inspired by Settenbrino’s family heritage, bringing together his Jewish and Italian roots. Located across from the Tenement Museum, the hotel and café celebrate the Jewish families, artists and businesses that helped shape the neighborhood.
16. Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse
112 Stanton Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded in 1975 by Stan Zimmerman, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse became a legendary Lower East Side destination for traditional Eastern European Jewish food and lively celebrations. Famous for its enormous portions, chopped liver, garlic-heavy steaks, schmaltz and bottles of vodka served frozen in blocks of ice, Sammy’s was part restaurant, part Jewish family party, complete with live music and sing-alongs. After closing its original Chrystie Street basement location in 2021, the restaurant reopened on Stanton Street in 2024, bringing back one of New York’s most beloved Jewish dining traditions. Book this for a future dinner in NYC. You won't be sorry!
14. Russ & Daughters Café
127 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Opened in 2014 to celebrate the original shop’s 100th anniversary, Russ & Daughters Café was created by fourth-generation owners Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper. Located on Orchard Street, where their great-grandfather Joel Russ first started his business, the café offers a sit-down experience featuring traditional Jewish favorites, including smoked fish platters, bagels and lox, latkes, blintzes and egg creams. Unlike the original shop, this is a full-service restaurant where you can sit and enjoy a meal.
17. Yonah Schimmel
137 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded in 1890 by Romanian Jewish immigrant Yonah Schimmel, this legendary Lower East Side bakery has been serving traditional Jewish knishes for more than a century. Famous for its hand-made, baked knishes filled with potato, kasha or vegetables, it remains one of New York’s oldest surviving Jewish food institutions. DON’T MISS: The classic potato knish, served warm with mustard.
15. Economy Candy
108 Rivington Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded in 1937 by Jewish immigrant Morris Cohen and his wife, Economy Candy began as a small candy business during the Great Depression. What started as a way to sell affordable sweets to neighborhood families became one of New York’s most beloved candy shops. Still family-owned and operated by the third generation of the Cohen family, Economy Candy is packed with nostalgic treats, old-fashioned chocolates, halvah, dried fruits and hundreds of candies from around the world. A true Lower East Side institution and a sweet reminder of the Jewish immigrant businesses that helped shape the neighborhood.
18. Russ & Daughters original
179 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded in 1914 by Polish Jewish immigrant Joel Russ, who began selling herring from a pushcart, Russ & Daughters moved to its famous Houston Street location in 1920. Named after his three daughters, Hattie, Ida and Anne, this fourth-generation family business is a New York Jewish institution known for smoked fish, bagels, lox, herring and traditional Jewish specialties. This is the original appetizing shop, primarily for takeout, not a sit-down restaurant.
LOOK FOR: The counter itself. This is living New York food history.
19. Katz's Delicatessen
205 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Founded in 1888 by Jewish immigrant families, Katz’s Delicatessen is one of New York City’s oldest and most famous Jewish delis. Known for its hand-carved pastrami, corned beef, matzo ball soup and enormous sandwiches, Katz’s has been a Lower East Side institution for generations. The deli became even more famous after its appearance in the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally. DON’T MISS: The legendary hot pastrami sandwich on rye with mustard.
STILL HUNGRY? KEEP WALKING.
BONUS STOP 20
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20. B&H Dairy - An old NYC Survivor
127 Second Avenue, East Village, Manhattan
WHY GO: One of New York City's last remaining old-school kosher dairy lunch counters, serving the kind of Jewish comfort food that once filled this part of Manhattan.
LOOK FOR: The tiny old-fashioned counter, restored vintage-style storefront signage and wonderfully unpolished old-New-York atmosphere.
TRY: Challah, borscht, cheese blintzes, latkes or matzo brei. Their own site calls out the challah and soups as house specialties.
LOWER MANHATTAN: WHILE YOU'RE THERE, LOOK OUT FOR JEWISH GHOST SIGNS...
A curated list.
Ghost signs are faded advertisements, surviving storefront lettering, and architectural inscriptions that reveal Jewish New York beneath today’s streetscape.
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1. S. Beckenstein / Beckenstein’s Men’s Fabrics
A color photograph of the red brick facade of the S. Beckenstein building at 130 Orchard Street, featuring multiple faded vintage painted advertisements and signs for woolens, rayons, silks, draperies, remnant department, and world's largest values savings, with a vertical yellow sign reading "WOOLENS" and "BECKENSTEIN" along with the address 130.
130 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Type: Surviving commercial signage, with later alterations
Relevant dates: Business established in 1919; moved into this building in 1945.
What to look for: Large lettering associated with Beckenstein’s fabric business, including woolens, silks, draperies, and its remnant department. The facade is one of the neighborhood’s most substantial surviving records of its old clothing trade.
How to find it: Stand across Orchard Street and look above the ground-floor storefront.
What it represents: Samuel Beckenstein arrived from Poland in 1910 and built a business around a wonderfully practical service: matching new trousers to a customer’s still-usable suit jacket. By the 1930s, the business advertised itself as the “World’s Largest Pants Matching House.”
Source and photographs:
https://www.untappedcities.com/ghost-signs-downtown-manhattan/
2. Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged
Manhattan: Jewish architectural lettering
These are not painted advertisements. They are surviving names and inscriptions on buildings that once housed Jewish newspapers, community organizations, or congregations.
Stone carving above the entrance to the Bialystoker building at 228 East Broadway, featuring the word "BIALYSTOKER" in raised letters with decorative borders and circular reliefs depicting various scenes below it.
228 East Broadway, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Type: Carved institutional lettering
Date: Built between 1929 and 1931
What to look for: “BIALYSTOKER” carved above the entrance in English letters deliberately styled to resemble Hebrew characters. Around the doorway are relief medallions representing the twelve tribes of Israel.
How to find it: Look directly above and around the main entrance on East Broadway. This is a doorway-level discovery, not a high wall advertisement. The official landmark report describes the lettering and decorative elements in detail.
What it represents: A mutual-aid and elder-care institution associated with immigrants from Białystok. It tells the story of landsmanshaftn, organizations through which immigrants from the same hometown supported one another in New York.
Official landmark report:
https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2529.pdf
Photographs and architectural background:
https://hdc.org/buildings/bialystoker-center-and-home-for-the-aged/
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3. The Forward Building
Manhattan: Jewish architectural lettering
These are not painted advertisements. They are surviving names and inscriptions on buildings that once housed Jewish newspapers, community organizations, or congregations.
173–175 East Broadway, Lower East Side / Two Bridges, Manhattan
Type: Architectural newspaper signage and inscriptions
Date: Building completed in 1912
What to look for: The former newspaper headquarters’ surviving facade lettering, including “Forward Building,” and the richly ornamented entrance and upper facade.
How to find it: View the East Broadway frontage from across the street near Seward Park. Start with the entrance, then look up. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s report documents the building and its identifying lettering.
What it represents: This was the headquarters of the Jewish Daily Forward, a major Yiddish newspaper serving immigrant readers. It is one of the strongest places to connect visible lettering with Jewish journalism, labor politics, and everyday immigrant life.
Important distinction: The enormous English and Yiddish rooftop neon signs shown in historic photographs are gone.
Official landmark report:
https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1419.pdf
Historic signage photographs and background:
https://urbanarchive.org/o/museumateldridgestreet/s/0da28a58-ba80-4605-a342-45dd362d3e11
LOWER MANHATTAN: WHILE YOU'RE THERE, LOOK CLOSER...
If you have a little extra time downtown, there are pieces of Non-food Jewish New York hiding in plain sight around Lower Manhattan - very much worth visiting. Some are centuries old. Others tell powerful stories connected to the Holocaust, September 11 and a Jewish community that has been part of New York since the 1600s.
Here are four worth seeking out. A curated list.
1. ANNE FRANK TREE
Liberty Park at the World Trade Center
Look for a white horse chestnut tree growing quietly in Liberty Park overlooking the World Trade Center.
This is not just any tree. It is a sapling descended from the famous chestnut tree Anne Frank could see from the Secret Annex in Amsterdam while she and her family were in hiding.
Anne wrote about the tree in her diary. Looking through the attic window at the chestnut tree, the sky and the birds gave her a precious connection to nature and the world outside.
The original tree eventually became seriously diseased and fell during a storm in 2010. But its story did not end there. Chestnuts had been collected and germinated, and saplings descended from Anne's tree have been planted at meaningful locations around the world.
New York's sapling was planted in Liberty Park in 2016 as one of 11 saplings donated to significant sites around the United States through the Anne Frank Center's Sapling Project.
WHEN YOU TRAVEL
Look for Anne Frank tree saplings in other cities, too. I do. When I find one, I leave flowers, something I have now done at Anne Frank trees in several cities around the world.
It has become one of the little things I look for when I travel.
LOOK FOR: The plaque identifying the Anne Frank Tree. Then look up through its branches and remember the tree Anne once looked toward from her attic window.
About the tree: www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/front-section/chestnut-tree/
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2. REMEMBER
DANIEL M. LEWIN
9/11 Memorial, North Pool — Panel N-75
Among the thousands of names inscribed at the National September 11 Memorial, look for Daniel M. Lewin.
Lewin was a 31-year-old Israeli-American technology entrepreneur and co-founder of Akamai Technologies. He was a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane hijacked on September 11.
Lewin had previously served four years as an officer in the Israeli military. According to the 9/11 Commission, he was seated immediately behind hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari and immediately in front of another hijacker. The Commission concluded that Lewin may have attempted to stop the hijackers in front of him, unaware that another was sitting directly behind him.
He was stabbed and is considered the first person killed in the September 11 attacks.
His name is inscribed with the victims of Flight 11 around the North Pool at:
PANEL N-75
LOOK FOR: Daniel M. Lewin.
Stop for a moment. Find his name. Remember him.
4. ONE OF MANHATTAN'S OLDEST SURVIVING JEWISH CEMETERIES
FIRST SHEARITH ISRAEL GRAVEYARD
55-57 St. James Place
3. WALL STREET SYNAGOGUE
47 Beekman Street
Despite its name, Wall Street Synagogue is on Beekman Street, a short walk from the World Trade Center.
The synagogue has its own powerful connection to September 11.
Six members of its congregation were killed in the attacks. The firehouse immediately next door lost four firefighters.
In the aftermath, the synagogue became part of the neighborhood's story of survival and recovery. Despite the devastation surrounding Lower Manhattan, the congregation was able to reopen and hold Rosh Hashanah services the week after the attacks.
LOOK FOR: Stand outside and look at the synagogue and its neighboring firehouse together. Their physical proximity makes the story of the two communities particularly moving.
It is a small New York story about faith, loss, resilience and neighbors.
5. Jewish-American Tercentenary Flagstaff
Battery Park, near State Street
It commemorates the 23 Jewish men, women and children who arrived in New Amsterdam in September 1654 and established the first permanent Jewish community in what became the United States. The State of New York erected the monument for the 300th anniversary of their arrival. And people can walk right past it without having any idea what it represents.
LOOK FOR: The small monument and inscription. Then stop and think about this: Jewish New York began with just 23 refugees arriving here in 1654.
You could walk right past First Shearith Israel Graveyard, Chatham Square Cemetery without realizing that more than three centuries of Jewish New York are sitting behind the gate. The cemetery belongs to Congregation Shearith Israel, New York's first Jewish congregation, established by the city's early Sephardic Jewish community in 1654. The surviving Chatham Square Cemetery was purchased in 1682. It contains members of some of New York's earliest Jewish families, including the Seixas, Nathan, Levy and Phillips families. The cemetery was once considerably larger. As New York expanded, portions were lost to development. In 1855, expansion of the Bowery required 256 graves to be removed and reinterred elsewhere.
LOOK THROUGH THE GATE: Access is limited, so this is primarily a look-from-outside stop. Look at the old stones sitting amid modern Lower Manhattan.
