How to explore New York City’s immigrant past through its food

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

There may be no other city in the world whose history can be told through its food as plainly as New York’s can. Its food landscape can be peeled back to reveal successive waves of immigrants, each adjusting their national cuisine to fit their new home. 

If you grew up watching New York on screen, you’ll think the one obligatory food option is a hot dog from a street cart. Known locally as a ‘dirty water dog’, because the frankfurters wade in warm water until they’re plopped in a bun and slathered with mustard, they’re the original New York street food. Their genesis is murky but it’s believed the Germans arrived in the 1840s, tubular meat in hand, and set up on corners selling frankfurters. The best known vendor is Nathan’s Famous, which has been slinging wieners in Coney Island since 1916, and is renowned for its Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest. Nathan’s also has a cart on the west side of Central Park.

The bagel found its way to American shores with the Polish Jews who immigrated to New York in the mid-19th century. For decades, the chewy baked ring was known only in European Jewish enclaves in the city. It found a wider audience when, in 1909, Russ & Daughters fired up its bagel-boiling vats on the Lower East Side, the first business in the US to have ‘and daughters’ instead of ‘and sons’ in the title. The Russ family still runs the same spot, the narrow interior lined with glass counters and the exterior displaying the original neon sign. Ever popular is the bagel with cream cheese and lox (salt-cured salmon fillet).  

Not long after the bagel landed in New York, another food icon emerged, thanks to Lithuanian-born butcher Sussman Volk. He used to let a Romanian immigrant store his meat in his shop freezer; as a thank you, the Romanian gave Volk his recipe for smoked pastrami (brined and spiced meat, now usually beef brisket). In 1888, Volk began selling the flavourful, tender meat at his deli in the Lower East Side. It proved so popular that a year later, Polish brothers Morris and Hyman Iceland, having mysteriously attained the technique for making the smoked meat, opened Katz’s Delicatessen a few blocks away. Its smoked pastrami on rye bread was a hit from day one, and the deli still serves the best version on the planet: monstrously big and unctuously tender. Since 1989, Katz has been famous for another reason, too: look for the placard hanging above the table at which Meg Ryan loudly fakes an orgasm in the film When Harry Met Sally. 

About the same time that Katz’s started churning out pastrami, Keens Steakhouse opened its doors a few blocks north, importing the tradition of the chophouse (restaurants serving grilled meat) from London. Keens’ regular patrons would come to feast on medium-rare steak and well-marbled mutton chops, and to smoke their churchwarden pipes. These were stored at the restaurant, a tradition that dates back to 17th-century England. Today, there are around 50,000 pipes hanging from the ceiling of the dimly lit, deeply atmospheric restaurant. 

As the steakhouse began to etch itself into the culinary culture of New York, so did another staple of the city’s diet. Nearly four million southern Italians checked in through the immigration centre on Ellis Island in the late-19th century, and they brought pizza with them. In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi started making and selling pizza at his grocery shop in Little Italy, creating the first stand-alone pizza restaurant in the US. Lombardi’s dish was defined by its crispy bottom — thanks to the use of coal-burning ovens, which became a hallmark of New York-style pizza. A busy, fully-fledged pizzeria, with gingham-topped tables and family photos on the walls, Lombardi’s still sells coal-fired pizza in that same tradition. 

Not a city to rest on its laurels, New York continues to push culinary boundaries. One of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, Eleven Madison Park, raised eyebrows when Swiss-born chef/owner Daniel Humm announced in May 2021 that it was going totally vegan. The elegant art deco restaurant, serving multi-course plant-based extravaganzas, has since retained its three Michelin stars, proving once again that New York is a city where innovation will always thrive.