Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food

Epilogue

I had one more pilgrimage to make: Vineland, New Jersey. In a place once known as the land of Jewish chicken farmers, in a borough called Buena, on a road called Wheat, Conte’s Pasta awaited me. Its mascarpone-colored façade masked a wall of metal siding, corrugated, like manicotti. The brim of the building rose in strips of brick: red and redder, a cross-section of lasagna, thick with sauce. 209 Epilogue Silver_Knish_Book.indb 209 1/31/2014 11:51:51 AM Knish 210 Mike Conte was open to a visit, on the condition that I coordinate with the knishes. Production had turned sparse. Knishes emerged from Conte’s ovens less often than the full moon rose over Jersey. Conte made knishes according to orders received. The orders came from distributors, who shuttled knishes to delis and bagel stores. When Conte first took over Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes, he had a handful of distributors. Seven years later, he was down to one. Steve Rapillo, the owner of Tufo’s Foods, a wholesaler in the Bronx, had been hawking Mrs. Stahl’s knishes since the 1990s. He remembered the green Plexiglas panels his customers displayed to lure clients. “People know your stuff because they see the sign and they remember their childhood,” said Rapillo. “‘You have Mrs. Stahl’s? I used to go to the boardwalk all the time . . .’”1 Without the sign, the knish risked anonymity. “If you’re standing there and you looked at the knish, it might not come to mind right away,” said Rapillo. He remembered when he would place orders by the caseload, every other week, back in the day. By 2012, the green signs with the Mrs. Stahl’s name were long gone, his customer base had dwindled , and the lineage was, at best, eclipsed. The lack of advertising was one obstacle of many. “The next generation, they don’t know from it,” said Rapillo. “Unless they grew up in that tradition.” Did he mean the Jewish tradition, the middle-class New Yorker tradition, or the tradition of eating cheap food off the street? Regardless , the majority of knishes on his order form fell under the category of Mrs. Stahl’s. Silver_Knish_Book.indb 210 1/31/2014 11:51:51 AM Epilogue 211 Assorted Cocktail Knishes Blueberry Cheese Knishes Broccoli Knishes Cherry Cheese Knishes Kasha Knishes Mixed Veg. Knishes Mushroom Potato Knishes Onion Cheese Knishes Pineapple Cheese Knishes Potato Cocktail Knishes Potato Knishes Spinach Cheese Knishes Spinach Knishes Strawberry Cheese Knishes Sweet Potato Knishes Not that all of them were in circulation. (Who still speaks of the Onion Cheese or the Pineapple Cheese?) “When it went down to Conte, there were some growing pains,” said Rapillo. “Now there are shrinking pains. I used to buy a hundred cases from Mrs. Stahl’s every other week; now I order thirty or forty from Conte every other month.” Distribution had shrunk by 90 percent. “He’s not crying over it,” said Rapillo. Conte had done well with his line of gluten-free pasta—so well, he built a million-dollar gluten-free outpost of Casa Manicotti.2 Every knish that came out of Conte’s factory, however, contained gluten. And every knish went through Rapillo, who sold Silver_Knish_Book.indb 211 1/31/2014 11:51:51 AM Knish 212 them to “a scant few bagel stores.” He was getting more and more orders for “thaw and serve.” It sounded like a botched experiment in cryogenics. “They’re fully baked and fresh,” said Rapillo. “You just take them out of the freezer. They come to room temperature. You can serve it the way it is.” (I would lobby to heat it up, but that was for another time.) The downside of thaw and serve was that defrosting made for a limited shelf life. After three days, the knish “started to break down.” Another industry trend was delivering items “par-baked.” It sounded like a golf tournament, heavy on the cannabis. “Factories bake it off seventy or eighty percent,” explained Rapillo . “That way it’s actually a fresh-baked item. You put it in the oven for five minutes. . . . You can have them nice and fresh all day long.” The next time he called Conte to place an order, he’d call me, too. Rapillo took down my number and clipped it to his knish file. I plotted my route and kept my schedule loose...