Herring Report from The Jewish Daily Forward
July 3, 2013,
9:00am
A Herring Mecca: Raskin's Fish Market
Schlomo Raskin stands behind the counter at his fish
shop which has been serving Brooklyn for more than 50 years.
Raskin’s Fish Market is a store from another era — it’s the kind of store
your bubbe probably shopped at. Located in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Raskin’s has been dolling out fresh fish for more than
five decades.
Walking down Kingston Avenue, Raskin’s faded pink-and-blue letters that hang
from the limestone building’s façade, advertising free delivery and listing the
phone number with both numbers and letters stand out, recalling a past when
neighborhoods were smaller and more tight-knit.
Stepping inside the small, narrow storefront, you’ll see piles of salmon,
snapper and dorade heaped on top of mounds of snowy crushed ice. Behind the
counter a friendly, elderly man still wields his fish knife with startling
precision, scooping the skin off a salmon filet in seconds. That’s Schlomo
Raskin, the store’s founder, who opened his eponymous fish shop at this location
in 1961 after immigrating from Leningrad, Russia.
Raskin’s Fish Market has a wall of herring, 20
varieties in all.
Schlomo is a quiet, soft-spoken man who won’t reveal his exact age (it’s in
the high 70s, he says) and leaves the majority of the tale-telling to his son
Berel, the current face of Raskin’s.
“Independent shops that specialize in one particular product have gotten less
popular,” Berel explained on a recent weekday afternoon. “People today want
one-stop shopping. But back in the 1950s and ‘60s in Crown Heights, you had your
butcher, your bakery, and the fish store.”
Berel said his dad had an entrepreneurial spirit and knew he wanted to open a
business in this country after him immigrated. Schlomo chose fish, Berel said,
because it’s much easier to get kosher certified. “Getting certified is a big
to-do,” he explained. “But when fish has scales, it’s automatically
kosher-certified.”
“Nowadays, most people buy their fish from the fish counter in a
supermarket,” Berel continued. “Here at Raskin’s we have to be extra superior
and try to specialize as much as we can, to keep the customers coming in.”
The quality brightly colored fresh fish is clear when you walk into the shop
but that’s not the only reason regulars return. Raskin’s is known in the
neighborhood and even abroad for its gefilte fish, varieties of herring and
canned tuna.
“The gefilte fish is our flagship product,” explained Berel. “This is frozen,
raw gefilte fish that you cook at home. It’s sold in all the major cities in the
country, as well as in France, Antwerp, London, and all over the world.”
The gefilte fish is available in several varieties, but that’s nothing
compared to the store’s selection of herring, which comes in 20 varieties and is
available smoked, pickled, and creamed, in different flavors ranging from the
traditional (schmaltz, or lightly salted) to the new (herring with pistachios, a
surprisingly delicious combination).
Berel explained that the popularity of this medium-sized, oily-fleshed fish
has less to do with religion and more to do with eating cheaply and sustainably.
“Herring is more ethnic than it is Jewish,” Berel said. “It’s cheap and
plentiful, and for Jews, it’s kosher.”
He chuckled as he broke open packages of herring for me to taste. “I could
talk about herring all day — and I have.”
Raskin’s Fish Market; 320
Kingston Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11213; (718) 756-9521
Read more:
http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/179742/a-herring-mecca-raskins-fish-market/#ixzz2qBUkPz21
