2. Pickles
Keeping with the Jewish food traditions, another stop on the tour may bring you to the Pickle Guys on Grand Street, just two streets away from what was once known as Pickle Alley on Essex Street. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dozens of pickle vendors lined the street. According to the New York Food Museum, seventeenth-century Dutch farmers first introduced the pickle to New York City when they brined and sold cucumbers that they grew on their Brooklyn farms. The word pickle even stems from the Dutch word “pekel,” which means brine. Though Dutch people introduced the pickle, it was Jewish immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who made it popular, especially the kosher dill pickle made with a brine of salt, water, dill, and garlic.
