Russ & Daughters Opens In Brooklyn With Space For The Next Four Generations

By Kelli Anderson/Jen Snow, Courtesy of Russ & Daughters

NAVY YARD – Russ & Daughters, the defining Lower East Side appetizing joint — and an old New York Jewish standby that has managed to keep up with the times — opened its doors officially in a sprawling space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Wednesday night, February 27.

Guests mingled among endless endless trays of borscht, latkes, smoked fish, babka and rugelach. Photos by Clay Williams. © Clay Williams. Courtesy of Russ and Daughters.

Russ’s great-granddaughter Niki Russ Federman was born in Brooklyn and lives in Park Slope, and she told Bklyner it was a natural move: Brooklyn now is a source of cultural energy “in the same way that the Lower East Side back in the day was this melting pot of people and ideas.”

Niki Russ Federman & Josh Russ Tupper, cousins and fourth generation owners at the opening party for Russ & Daughters’ new store, offices and production facility in the Brooklyn Navy Yards. Photo by Clay Williams © Clay Williams. Courtesy of Russ & Daughters

More practically, they were able to take not just a line of counters in Building 77 but a vast kitchen that can supply everything from their cafe on Orchard street to bagel aficionados around America.

She’s thrilled, she said, “to be able to have this amount of space where you can stay part of New York for another four generations.”

It would not be a party without Marty Markowitz (R) – with owner Niki Russ Federman and Navy Yard Chairman Hank Gutman. Photo by Clay Williams. © Clay Williams / Courtesy of Russ & Daughters.

Navy Yard Chairman Hank Gutman was also kvelling amid the endless trays of borscht, latkes, smoked fish, babka and rugelach.

Hank Gutman loves Russ & Daughters. Photo by Clay Williams © Clay Williams. Courtesy of Russ & Daughters

Brooklynites will “no longer have to “cross over to that outer borough of Manhattan,” he said, while “even in the most bagel deprived parts of this vast country you can now get an overnight shipment of Russ and daughters.”

Photo by Eli Smith/Bklyner

Russ & Daughters soft opening earlier this month was marked by long lines, and Federman said that one thing Russ doesn’t plan to do is serve “fast food.”

“We still slice everything by hand,” she said. “We give the same experience we have for 100 years.”

Smoked fish counter by Eli Smith/Bklyner

– with reporting by Ben and Eli Smith