[Undated photo of the B&H via Tablet on Facebook]
Tablet had a post the other day on the B&H Dairy on Second Avenue ... Eve Jochnowitz, "a lifelong Greenwich Village resident, Yiddish scholar and Jewish culinary ethnographer," visited B&H to talk about the history of dairy restaurants and their forgotten cousin the "appetizing store." You can find that piece here.
Meanwhile, EVG Facebook friend Jackie Friedrich shared this piece she wrote for the July 2, 1979 issue of New York magazine ... it looks at B&H reopening after closing for bankruptcy in September 1978... click on the image to read about the return of counterman Famous Dave Schornstein and others...
Jeremiah has a lovely history of the diner with archival photos from 2011 here.
Dave - I've missed that guy for all these years. I never knew his full name but I did get to meet his wife. A wonderful African American woman. It really tickled me because all those who knew and loved him had heard his berating of his customers, sometimes including a racial component. He was an equal opportunity curmudgeon.
ReplyDeleteYep, loved Dave - I've always had a soft spot for curmudgeons, but he was always nice to my friends and me when we went in on Sunday mornings for breakfast (that we were young, cute and respectful didn't hurt, I'm sure). I still remember watching him take a bowl of raw shirred eggs, hold them under a dispenser while he added milk and water, a thing I had never seen before, so as to engender steam to puff the eggs and creaminess from the milk, before passing the bowl to the line cook. To this day, every time I make scrambled eggs, I add milk and water in honor of Dave, and silently thank him for teaching me this simple trick. A great, cranky mensch.
ReplyDelete