08/28/2026
I know it’s blasphemous but a cherry cheese knish fron yonah schimmels is wonderful
In 1890, a Romanian immigrant named Yonah Schimmel started selling potato knishes from a pushcart on Houston Street, the kind of cheap, filling food that could get a factory worker through a twelve hour shift. Within twenty years the cart had become a real storefront, and the recipe barely changed: dough, potato, a hot oven in the basement, and a line of regulars who never stopped coming back. 🥟
The knish itself was practically built for the Lower East Side of that era. It was Jewish immigrant comfort food that cost pennies, filled you up, and didn't need a table or a fork, perfect for a neighborhood packed with garment workers and pushcart peddlers who ate standing up between shifts. Through the Depression, through waves of the neighborhood turning over again and again, the bakery just kept baking.
The storefront still stands at 137 East Houston Street, and it's still run by the same family, still pulling knishes out of a basement oven the old fashioned way. Somehow it outlasted the department stores, the automats, and half the businesses that once surrounded it. Have you ever had a Yonah Schimmel knish, or is this your introduction to it?
