A Tel Aviv shop called Sherry Herring known for its herring sandwiches is opening at 245 West 72nd Street, the former home of Jeannie’s Dream. The shop was featured on the Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil, and apparently gets rave reviews in Tel Aviv. If you’re the kind of Upper West Sider who likes their food salted, pickled and cured, it sounds like you’re in for a treat! Check out the segment from Somebody Feed Phil at the bottom of this post. And thanks to Jeff and Karen for the tips. Jeff also tells us “I saw Jeannie the other day and she’s opening a new hat shop on W. 75th sometime soon, so I guess keep an eye out.”
Italian restaurant Felice Columbus is set to open in the former home of Oxbow Tavern on the corner of 71st and Columbus Thursday, August 5th. We last reported on them here.
Faherty clothing store has opened at 245 Columbus Avenue between 71st and 72nd, replacing the store Paige. Thanks to David L. for the tip.
Taqueria 86 is opening between Broadway and Amsterdam on 94th Street, the location of the former “Whispers” bar. The website says “from Mexico to NYC.” It’s having a soft opening on August 4th, reports our tipster Kate, who adds “Hooray to new restaurants!”
Cream puff shop Beard Papa’s on 77th and Broadway is closed “till further notice.” We checked in with the corporate office for further details.
Coffee chain Blank Street is apparently opening an Upper West Side shop, though the location isn’t clear. The company registerd an LLC called Blank Street Upper West Side LLC. Blank Street (@blankstreetcoffee) is “a small-format coffee shop…” sold from energy efficient carts and spots — their name for shops,” our tipster Upper West Sider wrote. “A recent report on the concept from Forbes suggests that the location will be opening soon, perhaps by the end of the week- “By the end of July, it will have added four locations, 12 new ones by year’s end and expects 40 locations by June 2022, in New York City. Some of the new locations will be situated in Prospect Park, Dumbo, SoHo and the Upper East Side.”
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Sherry Herring on Somebody Feed Phil:
Oh noooo, Beard Papa. Their cream puffs were heavenly, but a costly addition to the hips.
Try Barachou on Amsterdam between 81st and 82nd. Delish!!
I’m sorry to say it, but Beard Papa needs some quality control.
They used to be one of my favorite dessert places in the city. The cream puffs were perfectly crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside. But in the last few years they were always stale when I got them, and I finally stopped going there.
Please bring back the former perfect Beard Papa cream puffs!
Confused by the name Taqueria 86 on 94th Street.
Who can forget Mexico vs Belgium in the World Cup in Mexico in 1986? Apparently the owners of this new taqueria can’t. Mexico won, but the fans still almost toppled el Angel de la Independencia. Just saying.
Great memory except half their customers weren’t even born then and will expect it to be at 86th street.
Maybe they could use 1986 instead? At least no one will be looking for 1986th street.
Their logo is a soccer ball though.
Good catch on spotting the soccer ball. And another clue: Maradona, who scored the “Goal of the Century” in the quarter finals against England, shows up in the photo montage as well.
Love Faherty’s orange awnning 🙂 Blank Street Coffee is a coffee cart, not a storefront. Looks like they have proper espresso/cappuccino/treats, so yay.
ooooooooooooo I’m first in line!
I am as excited as Phil about Sherry Herring. I hope that when Ms Sherry opens her West Side herring haven she extends her menu beyond the traditional (and admittedly geschmak)Jewish herring preparations. Good as they are, I’d love to taste some of the Scandinavian specialties I used to get at the late great Ulrika’s, on East 60th Street. Herring with dill, with mustard sauce, with caraway, with wine, with cream and always with dark bread and boiled potatoes on the side. Hurray for herring!
I am well under 75 (by more than 20 years) and am not Jewish. I lived in Austria and Poland. Through those languages, I understood Geschmack to mean tasty. I will admit I find some herring more tasty than others.
Also, Auntie Depression, thank you for the reminder about Ulrikas! I loved going there, especially sitting in the window display seat. Sadly the Scandinavian food renaissance of yore seems to have faded. We are left now with only the extremes of Aquavit and Ikea!
Loved that window table at Ulrika’s: a waitress once called it “The Princess Seat.” You’re right about the dearth of Scandinavian food locally. Cupcakes and pizza are fine, but I’d love to see a good Swedish restaurant on the UWS.
For those who don’t know, or not old enough to know, the name of the shop is a “play on words” of Cherry Herring, which is a liquor. My parents always pronounced it as Sherry Herring, and I don’t think they did it as a joke.
Actually, the liqueur is Cherry *Heering*, distilled by the company started by Peter Heering in the early 19th Century. (The distillery calls is “Heering Cherry” liqueur.) https://www.heering.com/story/
You are correct, my phone chose the wrong spelling and I forgot to proof read it before I posted it.
I wondered about the store name! My parents pronounced Cherry Heering that way too. They served the dark-red fruity liqueur in thimble-size glasses so a bottle lasted through many holidays and celebrations.
Dear Auntie, My own favorite weakness when I was living in the Village for over 35 years was Russ and Daughters. Their smoked salmon was nothing to rave about – overpriced and not any better than you can get at Fairway for much less. But their large variety of herrings was incomparable.
Yum!
I would appreciate if WSR could do a poll on what percentage of readers know what the word geshmack means. I think it’s under 2%. Auntie, are you over 75 years old? I can’t envision a reader of WSR actually using that word being under that age
I hadn’t heard it before, but didn’t find it hard to infer the meaning, both from context and from, you know, English and German!
Auntie’s age is none of your beeswax, Sonny Boy. Just assume it’s an unlisted number.
Anybody wants to know what ‘geshmak’ (or its variant spellings) means can Google it: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/geshmak
You’re very angry and perhaps an Uncle pretending to be an Auntie. Nebuch.
“Geschmack” is not Yiddish, but actually a very common Finnish expletive often used by Scandinavian fishermen to express comprehension, like the Italian “capice.”
Literally, it means “I get it!” and derives from the original Norse “gusmachen,” thought, like many Norse verbs, to be onomatapoetical, mimicking the sound a herring makes make you slap yourself across the forehead with it.
Jewish merchants buying fish for pickling picked the word up from the dockside markets and gradually the word worked its way into Eastern European Jewish communities, but the origins of the word are clearly Scandinavian, as there is no counterpart or homonym in Hebrew.
Huh, are you being serious? It is a Yiddish word. Most Yiddish words do not have a Hebrew basis, but rather, German (“Schmak” in German means tasty).
For starters Eastern European Jews did not speak Hebrew as their vernacular. It was reserved for religious and scholarly purposes.
Yiddish (as does English) has words from the majority cultures in which they lived in Europe. (and elsewhere). Yiddish speakers from different parts of Europe had different words for many things.
It seems that you would say that “hotel” is not an English word because it was taken from French.
Very interesting, Nemo. Ma “capice” non è esattamente una parola italiana. Uno dei verbi in italiano per ‘to know’ è capire, e la terza persona presente è capisce.
Sorry, Auntie got her tenses wrong because she’s so old and, you know, doddering. Second person present, translated as ‘you know,’ is capisci.
Or, perhaps: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/german-english/geschmack
What tipped you off? Was it the herring across the forehead? Was “Finland” too obvious?
If you can’t use a little Yiddish on the UWS then for goodness sakes where can you use it?
I agree but unlike other Yiddish words that are easily recognizable to the public at large like schmooze, shmear, putz, etc., the only people aside from very few octogenerians are hassidim who use the word geshmack. I personally would not post a word in any language that the average WSR reader would not know. Even born and bred baby boomer New York Jews who know sprinkles of Yiddish have never heard that word before.
I am way under 75, not close to being a hasid, and have heard the word Geschmak being used since I was a kid. I, for one, love that its being used.
To SadforUWS, new words is how we learn new things. How are we supposed to grow if we already know everything. Dictionarys still exist.
Thank you. I don’t come to WSR to learn new things, just to validate my own long-held opinions. How dare they try to enlighten me!
Btw, the word in question means “tasty”. And if Auntie Depression has brought anyone to learn a new word, she’s done a mitsveh.
Lighten up, bubeleh! If you understand what Google is, try it, you might learn something. And also from your elders.
I knew the phrase…”schmect gut” ….. for “tastes good” and I’m not even Jewish! Who cares, as long as it schmect gut!