Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, RUSS & DAUGHTERS: 100 Years of Appetizing

[1:20]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Today's episode was a live podcast filmed at Zibby's Bookshop at Minnie Rose in New York City. If you haven't been, go check it out. It's on 73rd And Lex. This event precipitated our fabulous holiday party and kicked off the holiday season in style. Enjoy. Nikki Russ Fetterman and Josh Russ Tupper are coauthors of Russ and Daughters, one hundred years of appetizing. Nikki Russ Fetterman is the fourth generation co owner of Russ and Daughters. At the age of 27, she chose to return to the shop in which she grew up. Together with her cousin Josh, she has grown Russ and Daughters into what it is today while preserving its cultural and culinary legacy. Nikki has been featured in The Sturgeon Queens, the award winning documentary about Russ and Daughters, television shows such as Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, and publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Food and Wine, Zagat, Vogue, and W Magazine. She was inducted into the Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame. I didn't know there was a Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame. Who knew? Anyway, and has an encyclopedic entry in the Jewish Women's Archive. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Christopher, and two children. Josh Russ Tepper is the fourth generation co owner of Russ and Daughters. Raised in an ashram in Upstate New York, Josh was working as an engineer in Portland, Oregon when the opportunity arose to join his family business at age 26. He has been leading Russ and Daughters with his cousin Nikki ever since. He has been featured in media outlets such as NPR, the Food Network, the Travel Channel, Forbes, The Cut, Kinfolk, Lucky Peach, The New Yorker, and Vogue. He is also one of the subjects of the documentary The Sturgeon Queens. Called the Babka Baron by The New York Times, Josh has been honored by the Museum of Food and Drink for his contributions to New York City food culture. He has taught at the YIVO Center for Jewish Research and Astor Center. He lives with his wife, Denise, and two daughters. Welcome, Nikki. Welcome, Josh. Thank you so much for being here to talk about Russ and Daughters. Congratulations on this absolutely beautiful book, A Hundred Years of Appetizing, a Cookbook. You will find out when you open it what appetizing means, what you thought it meant, what it is how it is not a deli. Why don't we start there? Yeah. That's good place to start. Okay. So

[4:18]Niki Russ Federman: I'm sure we're this is a room of New Yorkers, but even a lot of New Yorkers don't know the word appetizing or that that's the name for our food tradition. Who doesn't? It's okay. Who doesn't know appetizing? Now you're gonna shame everyone. No. No. No shame. No shame. But after today, you're not allowed to call us a deli. So so appetizing no. If you think of, for example, bagels and lox, that is appetizing. It's the sister food tradition to delicatessen, and it comes up from comes from Jewish dietary law that prohibits, you know, eating meat and dairy together. So on the Lower East Side, it's not a coincidence that on East Towson Street, find one block apart, Katz's Delicatessen and Russ and Daughters. Because the Delicatessen is where you go for smoked cured meats, think, you know, pastrami, corned beef, and then the appetizing store is

[5:08]Josh Russ Tupper: for fish and dairy. But where you used to?

[5:11]Niki Russ Federman: Yeah. Now it's, you know, it's all kind of a little blurred. Stuff. But pickled herring and cream sauce. Right? So these kind of classic Eastern European Jewish foods that were kind of many of the flavors and tastes were brought over and foods were brought over from by the waves of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, but then also adapted to what they found here in in New York. And the word is kind of funny. Right? Appetizing. It it comes from the Yiddish word forespeis, which means appetizers, because these are foods that are typically you know, they're already smoked. They're pickled. They're cured. They're ready to eat. So, you know, if you were if you're coming home from a wedding or a shiva, you know, someone's a funeral, a birthday, the foods were able to be easily put out and ready to consume. And what probably happened is that someone like our great grandfather, who was a Yiddish speaker, was trying to say trying to say appetizers, but instead said appetizing, and that stuck. So that's very, you know, I don't think it's been researched, but that's

[6:18]Josh Russ Tupper: the sort of anecdotal story of how we got our name. And it's a tradition born in New York.

[6:23]Zibby Owens: But the other thing that stuck that your great grandfather did was establish Russ and And the two of you, fourth generation, have such interesting stories. This was not what you thought you would be doing with your life, but yet here you are, not just the book, but also Russ and Daughters in general. Yeah. Talk a little bit about where you were before and when you heard the call to come back. Yeah. So I had never been involved in the store. My my mother was sort of the black sheep of the family and did the the hippie thing in the sixties

[6:52]Josh Russ Tupper: and moved upstate to an ashram where I was born and well, I was born I was the only child born in a hospital. But I was I was there till I was 10 years old. I rebelled and sent myself to boarding school in Minnesota, played some hockey, and then got a chemical engineering degree, as you do as rebelling from the Oshawa world. Go to engineering school. And I was working as an engineer in Portland, Oregon for five years when I heard through the grapevine, which was my mother, that Nikki's father was sort of looking for his exit strategy. Mind you, it was a a few years down the road. And at that time, I was sort of thinking about the history of of this side of our family and what our grandmother, who was a very important figure in all of our lives, she was sort of the glue that held the family together, a real matriarch, and was one of the daughters. What she did with her life and what she did with her life was Russ and Daughters. Whether she wanted to or not, she definitely went all in and spent her life at the store till, you know, her seven in her seventies, she would come up from Florida and help out for the holidays. So I was sort of having this debate, and I was working as an engineer and doing stuff that I couldn't explain to anyone. There was no real passion behind it. Right? So I told Mark I'd leave my career and come to New York and and attempt to to get into the business. And he tried to dissuade me and he's like, it's not all Martha Stewart appearances. I like, oh, you're you're on Martha Stewart? That's cool. And as I tell this or as I thought the story went, I convinced him over the course of months that I should I would be able to come back or I'll learn anything, whatever. But the reality, think, was Nikki was there helping out. And then one day, she was like, I'm leaving. I'm not doing this. I'm gonna go explore my own path. And at that point, Mark called me up and was like, alright, Josh. You can come back and and see how it works. And then for the next five years, every day, he reminded me. He's we'll see. Not sure if this will but we'll see how it goes. Yeah. And my story is that I unlike Josh, I grew up in the store. I was a shop kid. And for me, Russ and Daughters was a literal mom and pop because it was my mother and father.

[9:09]Niki Russ Federman: And I actually now think that it was I mean, it was a very formative part of my education even though at the time I was, like, just annoyed, you know, why can't we go home? And why are you sending me to Moishas to pick up a roll of quarter? You know, quarters, go get it yourself. But I I think I absorbed from a very young age very much like being in this shop, the sort of very almost primal human interactions and coming together that happens in in a store. You know, it's not just about the exchange of goods and transactions. And I I was exposed to that from a very, very young age, and I saw how all of New York, meaning and in our you know, all of humanity came through those doors. And whether they were customers, whether they were delivery people, the staff, celebrities, the, you know, old time Lowry Siders, it was all happening in this small space. And I saw how this food sort of always evoked an emotion or a story. But that being said, I was very much kinda educated and encouraged, like, go do your own thing. I think we have an ethos in our society of like, you should do something better than the generation before you. And so I didn't think that I was gonna end up, you know, working at Russ and Daughters, but it took me about seven years of well, now I think of as my wandering Jew phase. I was, you know, trying these different life paths and nothing really felt real to me. And when I got to the bottom of the list, I had to I started taking stock and really thinking about what Ross and Daughters means, not just to me, but a sort of a in a larger context. And I realized that in a way I was kind of I didn't need to fight this thing, that actually I was just looking at it all wrong. And whereas before thought, if I ended up doing what three generations of my family had done for work before me, that somehow I hadn't individuated. You know? I realized that I was part of in Yiddish, you say a yiches. Like, I was part of a lineage. And there's something really not just beautiful about that, but in this country, we don't have a lot of history. We don't preserve craft. You know, we don't preserve place as as well as I think we could, and that Russel and Daughters hold a lot of meaning for a lot of people, and that I could be the steward of of maintaining the, you know, a 100 years of tradition and history and the things that needed to stay the same. But I also realized that just because it was a 100 years old didn't mean that it was stagnant nor should it be. And that I could, you know, move it forward and and do fun things with it, like open a restaurant. Easier said than done. Easier said than done. But it was that kind of shift that led me to call my parents, they've kind of given up on me and I said, look, I I actually wanna come back. My father, whose heart had sort of been broken by when I told him that this is not what I want to do, he was kind of more subdued the second time around. I said, well, that's nice. But now your cousin's involved, you gotta talk to talk to Josh. But luckily, we realized pretty quickly that we we saw the same things and we had the same values and that we would make a good team. I didn't harass her every day like her father harassed me. Right. Right. And we're also not married to each other and we're not siblings. We don't have that kind of baggage.

[12:58]Zibby Owens: So it works. My family history went a little bit differently, but my great grandfather opened, like, a dry goods store in Philadelphia, and my grandfather took it over. And then my dad and uncles had to work in the store all the time. They hated it. That's, like, all they could do. And my dad was like, let's make this Bed Bath and Beyond. And his dad was like, absolutely not. And now it's gone. Aw. But what's interesting actually, as an aside, we were looking through photo albums recently, and the the store address was 1311 whatever street it was on. And my bookstore in Santa Monica is 1311 Montana Avenue. Isn't that funny? Universe? Yeah. Universe at work. So, anyway, yeah, there is something about a store and a place, and I love what you just said about it not being an exchange of goods and services. It's about life and connection. Right? Right. And actually food for you. Right. And and your story, I mean, you know, so many people have some version of our story, and so it's really beautiful for us to kinda be

[13:55]Niki Russ Federman: the portal that allows people to, like, kind of think about their own family history or, you know, connect with, like, their own traditions and memories. And and our food is kind of that type of legacy

[14:11]Josh Russ Tupper: identity food that Yeah. Can that has the power to do that. And we wanted when we made the cookbook, you know, it's it's a cookbook, but it's more. Right? It Yes. It's meant to speak to to people like you and and the people that have the history in the Lower East Side, which is many many Jews mostly. But it's it's that his history and and bringing a little piece of this idea of that that shop, you know, the mom and pop shop and that experience beyond the the exchange of goods

[14:40]Zibby Owens: into your home. So we hope that this book does that. Well, the book is so great too because, yes, you have all the traditional recipes. You have spins on the traditional recipes, are also clever and totally exciting to try and all of that. But you have a lot of history in here too. And I actually I love the dialogue that you have with all of you being like, we can't believe we've never sat around and talked about what this means to us. And you're like, yeah. Isn't that crazy? It was You talked about your mom and pop store. And your mom, I guess, is Colombian. Yes. Your dad was like, Well, I couldn't have a mom and pop store without the mom. I had to get somebody in here. Talk a little bit, you said in the book your mom, with her Colombian accent, felt not quite accepted by the regulars and worked in the back for a while. Tell me a little bit about that. My mom was a research

[15:26]Niki Russ Federman: chemist who came here to work in a in a lab for what she thought would be a couple years. And then met my father and, you know, that Who a lawyer? Who was a lawyer at the time. She thought she was marrying a lawyer. Yeah. That was awesome. And then, you know, the pull of the family business. Right? Like, better who's a great lawyer. Yeah. He's selling fish. Yeah. And and Columbia is a very it's a very classist society. So this was like, you know and this was before now, you know, I think we people who make food and and are are celebrated. Right? There's an appreciation now that I don't that back in the seventies wasn't there, and people thought, like, you were a lawyer and now you're selling, you know, herring? I'm a what what happened to you? Right? So there was a little bit of that, but over time, she also kinda got pulled in. And so growing up, I would, you know, I remember making all the holiday, you know, gift baskets with my mom in the back, you know, and that was one of my jobs. That being said, you know, yeah, she she still even has a very strong accent, and she would pick up the phone and people would say, I wanna speak to someone. And that really stuck with her, and I think she's kind of you know, they're a yin and yang couple, so he's very much the, like, the extrovert, and I think it just made her a little bit more of a of an introvert. And, you know, it's those things stick. One of my what I love about something we did with the book, which wasn't a plan, it just happened or, like, in the moment was you'll see that the the bookends of the book, it starts with our family's history, our immigrant story, and then it ends with these lovely black and white portraits of our a lot of our not all not everyone, but Everyone. Was there because we took portraits of our staff. And you see that that the immigrant story continues. And that just happened because while we were doing the food photography, which is very time consuming because you have to make the recipe, Then you have to set up the camera. Like, it's a whole and that's just one recipe. We had to do this Recipe. So it was a lot of downtime. And so through the waiting, we just started taking pictures of our There's

[17:42]Josh Russ Tupper: a team of two photographers, and the and the husbands could not stand still. Yeah. So he had to do something with this downtime.

[17:49]Niki Russ Federman: What it end up being? Everything. Yeah. But now I think I I really appreciate it because to you know, Russ and Daughters is a family business in the literal and figurative sense of the word. And I I mean, that time, you know, we had some some immigrant

[18:03]Josh Russ Tupper: employees as well, and people were wary. You know, your father would say, This is a Jewish business for Jewish people and that sells Jewish foods. So we had, like, a Dominican guy on the counter that came out of the kitchen and and he would be out there and and no one would let him slice their fish. Mhmm. And the way he got in their good graces was he started speaking Yiddish. Wow. Yeah. So he'd speak Yiddish then. Then he'd be like, oh, okay. Like, you're okay. So it was a it was a challenging time. Oh my god. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[21:18]Zibby Owens: Well, I'm I was also really interested in the book. I'm interested in how brands evolve because so many brands have not been able to adapt and yet others. Like, look at Kodak for instance, which has really suffered. I worked on that account in an ad agency like forever ago. And so I've been watching the demise of that one storied brand, and then I look at, like, Ralph Lauren on the corner where there's a line around the like, that could that didn't have to happen. Why? They're selling coffee now. Yeah. So, anyway and I look at you and how you've opened this restaurant in addition, and I'm sure you've operationalized so many things. You referenced stuff you can't see, but I'm sure makes it much more efficient. Mhmm. Talk about how to keep a brand alive and what in addition to stewardship, like the two of you being stewards of the brand, what do you have to do? How can you modernize and maintain the authenticity and the history? Yeah. I think for us, we have this guiding light, which is the original store and, you know, 111

[22:10]Josh Russ Tupper: years old now. So we're always looking to that to to make sure we're not straying too far away from our principles and ideas. And and we're an advertising store. Mhmm. So we stick we really stick to what we know. That being said, we wanna evolve and we wanna make things more efficient and introduce technology and but as we do that, we have to keep a hold of the historical connection. So it's a lot of of debates. Right? Or how how do we do this? How do we open this restaurant that's gonna be brand new and not put like a fake patina on everything to make it, oh, it's the old place. Like, no, we're not gonna do that. We're it's gonna be brand new. So it's just a it's a lot of how do we maintain the through line to our history and to the the original store and look and feel. And then there's the interaction that Nikki spoke of. It's it's not a typical commerce, you know, interaction. It's more of like, yeah, we wanna know you as a person or you as a customer and your families and we want generations of family to shop here. So it's challenging. We say that the innovation for us is is something that the customer doesn't notice. But we can, you know, we've changed all the systems to computers and POSs and e commerce and all of these things. But it it we're always trying to maintain that connection to the past. Is is it asked, you know, how do you maintain

[23:40]Niki Russ Federman: authenticity and and, you know, that history and then also change? And actually, it's it's by trying to do both of those things at the same time. Mhmm. That's at least for us, that's always the creative challenge. And for us, I think businesses sometimes do one or the other. Right? Like, okay, we're gonna just we're gonna stay the same. Or we're gonna, you know, create a destruction. Right? We're gonna blow this all up and create something new. And we're I think it's a lot harder, but really interesting to try to do those seemingly incongruous things at the same time, stay the same, and keep, you know, evolving. And for us, it's it's been very organic. It hasn't we've never sat down and said, well, you know, this is our ten year plan. Just feeling wanting Russ and Daughters to hopefully continue for another four generations, have another four generations of customers, and then just seeing what what the sort of organic next thing is. So for example, our restaurant was born out of people increasingly coming to to our chef thinking that they're wanting to sit down. And they would come and walk right into our kitchen in the back because they thought that's surely where the, you know, the tables must be. And then I always I felt this horrible dread where I had to, like, take them out of the kitchen and tell them that they could sit on our two bin one of our two benches outside when it was, you know, 20 degrees outside. And so or seeing people come and, you know, they'd order at the counter. I remember one time I saw this guy. He bought some pickled herring with cream sauce and onions. And then I watched him as he went into his car. He double parked in front, and he was sitting behind the steering wheel, and he took our bag by back then, you know, plastic bag was allowed back then. He tied it around his neck like a like a lobster bib, you know? And he sat there eating his pickled herring and having this moment. And it was so beautiful, but also I thought, we really need to open a restaurant. I've never I've never worked in a restaurant. I don't know anything about restaurants, but we're gonna do this. You know, similarly with our bakery Mhmm. We were also not trained bakers, but we just felt this sort of obligation that seeing how these iconic, you know, baked goods that we've oh, our family's always relied on sort of independent bagel rollers and, you know, that it was increasingly either dying out or becoming just so mass produced Mhmm. And that somebody needed to step in and preserve a real New York bagel, a real bialy, you know, a bobcat, all those things. And we thought, well, I guess that's on us. And that's how our bakery was started.

[26:30]Zibby Owens: Well, I'm very indebted to you and your whole team because recently my stepfather passed away and I hosted the reception. We hosted the reception at our home and I ordered online because you're totally modernized. You can get everything delivered and, you know, it's like very seamless. So I ordered like, I don't know, 40 arugula or something. And they called me. Someone actually called from the website and were like, hey, no problem if this is what you want, but did you mean to order 40 boxes of arugula? And I was like, oh my gosh. No. I just wanted 40 pieces. Yeah. So they could have easily just shipped me all of You're

[27:10]Josh Russ Tupper: an ideal customer.

[27:12]Niki Russ Federman: You're like, you ordered $40.20

[27:14]Zibby Owens: dollar boxes of Rugula. I know. I was I'm wondering why it was expensive, but I was like, I'm gonna support this lovely, yes. After our business and all of that. So anyway, yeah, I was delighted to not do it. But anyway, it just speaks to your customer service and ways of adapting. The book is very much about who the customers are too, and you can tell you really want to please them and uphold their impressions of everything, and that's not easy.

[27:39]Josh Russ Tupper: No. Not easy. Especially not our customers. I like to say we've we've created the most difficult customers in the world. Mhmm. For good reason, you know, like we care that much about your experience and try to do everything to meet your desires that, you know, we have very challenging customers. And cuss a customer in a family been shopping with Russ and Daughters for four or five generations feels ownership over the brand and and who we are. So, like, they're they're telling us how to do things.

[28:10]Zibby Owens: Well, it's it's an interesting time to be Jewish and to have a Jewish forward business. Mhmm. How has that affected you, especially since October 7?

[28:19]Niki Russ Federman: You know, it's actually been kind of just really meaningful to be doing this work in this time because our food is, at the end of the day, it's comfort food. And when times are difficult, we feel like we're doing a service to be giving people foods that remind them of, you know, of joy and good memories and, you know, who they are and, to be able to do that for generations of families and to weather, you know, after a hundred eleven years, like, we've weathered a lot of ups and downs. And, you know, we just always look past it to just getting through to the, you know So it's it's been challenging, but also very, very rewarding, unexpectedly.

[29:11]Josh Russ Tupper: It's really demonstrated to us how important a place in LA Girls and Daughters is to to bring people together Mhmm. Over food. And that's how we want our food enjoyed. You know, our families coming together, friends coming together, all kinds of people coming together and enjoying food and and positivity. Right? So we it it's made us feel

[29:33]Zibby Owens: good about who we are in this time. That's great. And we do have Russ and Daughters black and white cookies right over there. You can all stampede and and fight over them. We have enough for everybody. But maybe that's why you came tonight. That's why I would come. But so you can sample sample the the goodness of of their products. And the recipe is in the cookie Should you choose to And wanna make black and white what is it? Like a black and white caviar or black and white vodka. Yeah. It's in the queue. So we we And I have to find it. Well, it's gonna be oh, shoot. I noticed. Look at how cute this is.

[30:08]Niki Russ Federman: And it's delicious. So it's caviar and creme fraiche on the latke. And in the book, it we used to call it caviar lovers black and white. And then I was with a a friend at the cafe, and he was eating it. He said, isn't this a black and white latke? And I thought, oh, yeah. That that makes a lot more sense because caviar lovers black and white Yeah. The servers, nobody really knew what that was. So that we even had the servers walk around with, like, a little picture in case somebody just didn't know what it looked like. So this is a lot more obvious. But it didn't make it in time to That's okay. To be in the room. It's alright. Do you either of you, what are your favorite either dishes here or just

[30:46]Josh Russ Tupper: things that you sell at Buss and Daughters? So it's a tough question. Right? When we get asked, like, what's your favorite salmon? You know, it's a it's a beauty contest. Okay. And every day, something could be more beautiful than the other. So it's our job to taste and love everything and and make sure everything is right. But we do have favorites. At the cafe, one of my favorites is the our kasha varnishkes, which is funny. Many of you Wait. Why is it funny? Because kasha varnish kiss is not thought of as, oh, my God. That's the most delicious thing on the venue, and it's, like, my go to. And you all probably remember your grandmother's kasha and enjoyed every second of it, but it was probably not very good. However, that was not nearly as challenging as as the matzo bread that we'd have to take off the menu. And then at the store, I think simplicity I'm a real fan of simplicity. Toasted buttered bialy with pastrami smoked salmon. It's one of my favorite bites. There you go. We are all getting hungry. Yeah. Wait a minute. How about you? Why is the mozzarella off the menu?

[31:53]Niki Russ Federman: This is a flash point. You would you would be surprised that this the most simple recipe ended up being the most, like, controversial at the cafe when we opened it because everyone grew up eating a different version of matzo braai. And everyone has a memory, you know, of eating it once a year probably. And so we have a delicious recipe, but it could never match up with people's taste memory. And so we opened this restaurant, you know, and we're worried about a thousand things. I never saw it coming that matzo bra was gonna be the big, you know, challenge. But, yeah, it got to the point where we were we instructed the servers to ask guests how they wanted the matzo brai made, which is if you're running a restaurant, it's a terrible thing to do. So now it's you can all get it, but you just have to ask for it. So it's like a if you know, you know. Oh. Lots of pride. I can ask for in the know you guys. Yes. But but it's your way to me. It's our way. Okay. Yes. Don't expect to like it. My favorite yeah. My favorite in the book is maybe surprising because we I was just telling you about appetizing. You know, it's fish and dairy, but actually my favorite recipe in the book is a meat dish, which is aunt Ida's stuffed cabbage. Oh, that's a yes. Aunt Ida was the middle of the three Russ daughters. Our grandmother was the youngest. And she was the rebel who broke away from the family and and didn't went off and did her own thing. But I but growing up, I would go in when the three daughters were still alive, and I'd out to Long Island and just sit at the table and watch these three sisters in their moo moos, you know, eating stuffed cabbage. Just they were they were the like, the Golden Girls had nothing on the Russ daughters, and she made this fabulous stuffed cabbage. But pass of course, she passed away without writing it down, and I wanted Ida to somehow figure into the book. And I so I set out to try to recreate her stuffed cabbage. So I got ahold of her The son that Nikki is. This I so got ahold of her son, Marty, who's now in his eighties in California, and, you know, had him because, you know, he was trying to remember. And and then I went to the American Jewish Historical Society downtown, and they have a a collection of historic cookbooks. So I was going through all these, like like, the Hadassah ladies of Rochester from 1952, you know, and finding these kind of really old school stuffed cabbage recipes and then trying to match those two things. And then I would make it make a version and I'd ship it to California. And then Marty would be on the phone with me while he was eating it, and then he would give me notes, you know. Oh, you need a little bit more tang. You know, maybe do, you know, a different raisin. Like and then I would make it again. I'd ship it to him. This one we went back and forth, you know, multiple times. My kids started out, like, loving the stuffed cabbage, and now they're like, no more stuffed cabbage. But I think the day when Marty you know, the last shipment I sent him, and he ate it, and he said, this reminds me of my mother. Aw. I thought, okay. We got it. And that's so I I'm emotionally attached to that recipe. And it's delicious too. I just have one more question, which is aside from

[35:19]Zibby Owens: buying the book, which, by the way, is the perfect how do you modernize? You, like, answered the question I asked before. You made this book, which is, like, the perfect answer. But aside from buying the book and going down to eat, like, can we all do to make sure that Russ and Daughters is around for the next hundred years? How can we support and make sure that this tradition carries on? Oh, wow. I think if is remembering

[35:42]Niki Russ Federman: I mean, as much as, you know, we can you can order online and we'll deliver it to you and we ship around the country, just remembering the importance of place and and storefronts and and coming and visiting us in person if you can, and sort of sharing this tradition, whether it's with, you know, the next generation or you're thinking of someone and you wanna send them a gift. I think we live now you can pretty much get anything you want, anywhere, at any time, you know, with a click. And I think there are few things like foods and especially foods that are rooted in place that are still, you know, unique and evoke a lot. And so to just keep that in mind as you, you know, help to share it. And we hope we can wrangle one of our kids to do to do this. So

[36:36]Josh Russ Tupper: hopefully, there'll be a fifth generation. Yeah. The the big challenge we see now is is we're we're turning into a a a place, a a reality that is less and less in person interactions. And I think Russ and Daughters promotes we hope to continue that in person interaction. So come into the store and, you know, buy whatever, something small, but, like, be there and and share that experience and realize the importance of

[37:05]Zibby Owens: being in person, like, having that interaction in in real life. Amazing. And look at how great they're all in real life today. This is amazing. So this is the prime audience. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you, Sibby. Thank you listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.