Food Tours · Tour

Katz's, Kossar's, the Pickle Guys and a Romaniote Synagogue

Three hours at a relaxed pace across the Lower East Side, twelve guests, six or more tastings. It starts at Katz's on East Houston, where the pastrami is cured for weeks before it is steamed and where When Harry Met Sally shot the scene everyone quotes. Rugelach at Russ & Daughters is a few doors down. Orchard Street is named for the actual orchard that stood here before the tenements did. It went from pushcart market to garment trade to bargain strip, and Time Out recently put it on its list of the coolest streets in the world. Economy Candy on Rivington has been selling chocolate, nuts and gummies from the same shelves since 1937. At 97 Orchard, roughly seven thousand people from more than twenty countries lived in one building before the landlord sealed the upper floors in 1935 and walked away from them. What was still up there when someone finally opened them is the reason it is now the Tenement Museum. Dumplings come from Vanessa's on Eldridge, with a vegetable substitute for anyone not eating pork. On Broome Street stands Kehila Kedosha Janina, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, built in 1927 by a congregation from Ioannina in Greece whose tradition is separate from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism and runs back nearly two thousand years in the eastern Mediterranean. It still holds services. The Williamsburg Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened in 1903, and it emptied this neighbourhood, carrying a generation of families across to Brooklyn. At Essex Market the guide's friend Saad pours balsamic and olive oil at his spice shop before you shop the hall. The Pickle Guys, who pickle nearly anything, give you three of their best sellers. Kossar's on Grand does bagels and bialys, and the bialy is the one to pay attention to, baked not boiled, with onion pressed into a dimple instead of a hole. It ends at a doughnut counter on Grand Street that beat Bobby Flay on television. Wheelchair accessible throughout. Rain or shine. Water included. Vegetarian and dietary needs can be sorted when you meet the guide.