New York City has a rich and diverse culture thanks to generations of immigration. The city has benefited from welcoming immigrants in countless ways, and the most tangible is it’s diverse and delicious cuisine! On a summer trip to New York before we moved there, I took the Tenements, Tales & Tastes food & history tour with Urban Adventures so I could learn how generation of immigrants from around the world have shaped New York City. This tour is one of the best tours I’ve ever done, I loved it so much that I recommend it as one of the best things to do in New York City. It’s a small group, with less than 12 guests, and it takes a leisurely pace through some of Lower Manhattan’s most interesting neighbourhoods, including Chinatown, Little Italy & the Lower East Side. Our guide, Brian, was super knowledgeable and entertaining, and there was plenty of food on the way. I really struggle on tours without a more interactive element, so the regular stops for delicious snacks was perfect for me!

If you ask me, there’s no better way to understand a foreign place than through food. Food is where we tell our stories and hide our traditions in the face of change. Food tells us who we used to be, where we are, where we came from and sometimes where we’re going. America cops a lot of criticism for the “Standard American Diet”, but it is a fascinating place to explore regional cuisines influenced by native ingredients and immigrants from all over the world.

Financial District: Dutch Stroopwaffles

Our tour began in the Financial District, the oldest part of New York City. Our guide, Brian, handed out stroopwaffle biscuits while he shared the story of how the Dutch started the colony of Nieuw Amsterdam right where we were sitting. If you’ve been to the Netherlands, you might already have tried stroopwaffles – they’re a delicious, thin and chewy honey biscuit that are still made by a few bakeries in New York.

Unlike the French on their “civilising mission” or the British Puritans “motivated by religious ideals”, The Dutch were up front about the fact that they were simply out to make money. They saw the settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam as a commercial expedition, and the city was just to be a trading post. As Brian pointed out, this initial sentiment of “greed is good” has never really left New York. He said that unlike many other parts of America, in New York it’s not important which god you worship: as long as you make enough money, you can stay.

We did a loop through the Financial District, which is one of the oldest parts of the city. It’s here that you’ll find Pearl Street, so named for the shine of the oyster shells that used to litter the streets, when the Hudson teemed with oysters. We passed the former site of the notorious Five Points neighbourhood, a notorious slum that existed for more than 70 years in New York and was a hotbed of violence, misery and gang rivalry (see: Gangs of New York). Today, the streets that joined into the Five Points have been renamed or no longer exist, and there’s nothing to suggest it’s grisly past.

Irish, Jewish & Italian Legacies

New York has a strong Irish immigrant history, which was covered briefly as we walked by the police department and the very nondescript FBI headquarters. While we didn’t drop into any Irish pubs on the tour, Brian explained how many industries in New York are known for being dominated by the descendants of immigrant groups who struggled to get a foothold over a hundred years ago.

He gave the examples of the Irish in the police force (the city’s current police commissioner is an O’Neill, and the last hundred years are filled with Murphys, Clearys, Kellys, Condons, Murphys and McGuires!), Italians in construction and Jews in banking (Goldman Sachs), fashion (Donna Karan, Calvin Klein & Diane von Furstenburg to name a few) and theatre & film (Barbara Streisand, Bette Midler, Steven Spielberg, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and so many more). It was an interesting trend I was unaware of as a foreigner, and a few days later at Comedy Cellar, I got the joke when the Italian-American comedian cracked jokes about his family’s work in construction.

Chinatown: Dumplings

From the Financial District we crossed into Chinatown, as Brian shared with us how the Chinese settlers came to arrive in New York and their struggles as they tried to settle in America.

Chinatowns are features of many American and Australian cities, as Chinese immigrants moved overseas during the major gold rush periods around the 1800s. Chinese immigrants faced a lot of racism and exclusion, and in the 1880s The Chinese Exclusion Act halted the flow of Chinese immigrants into America altogether. No doubt, this made life even harder for the Chinese living in New York already. This helps to explain why Chinatown became such a distinctly Chinese neighbourhood – nowhere else in Manhattan would have felt safe. In the 1940s, there was a small quota for Chinese immigrants, which wasn’t lifted until the 1960s!

Brian led us down an alleyway to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. There were a couple of stools inside, occupied by regulars, and it was so small we had to go in two-at-a-time to collect our plate of dumplings. I normally don’t eat meat (except seafood), but I decided to make an exception and try one dumpling, before giving the rest to David…except I promptly ate all of them. They were too good!

This dumpling house has been in Chinatown for decades, and a plate of pork & chive dumplings was just $1.25. The regulars jokingly grumbled about how they remember when they were just $1 years ago, yet they hadn’t been able to resist coming back.

Little Italy: Mozzarella

As we crossed from Chinatown into Little Italy, Brian explained how Little Italy had grown and then shrunk in recent years. During the 1880s, thousands of Italian men immigrated to New York to take advantage of the growing industrial age in America. They were escaping the droughts, diseases, organised crime and conflict which was destroying Italian agriculture and the economy. Many intended to work in America, send money home, and eventually return home themselves, however as the situation in Italy worsened, whole families moved over to New York. Unfortunately for them, the mafia moved to New York too!

Little Italy used to span 30 blocks but today it’s only a few blocks along Mulberry Street, wedged between neighbourhoods that grew like SoHo and Chinatown and new neighbourhoods like Nolita (North of Little Italy).

Unlike Chinatown, which is still predominantly a Chinese neighbourhood, there are not many Italians living in Little Italy anymore. After World War II, many Italian families moved to New Jersey, Staten Island, The Bronx and Brooklyn for more space. Today, Little Italy only occupies a few blocks of Mulberry Street, and is surrounded by Chinatown, SoHo, Nolita and the Lower East Side.

Little Italy gets a bad rap for being touristy and inauthentic, however there are still a handful of authentic Italian food stores, bars & restaurants in the area. I’m working on a neighbourhood guide for Little Italy at the moment, watch this space! We went into Alleva, which is the oldest cheese shop in America, to sample some fresh buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto and chat to the owners.

Lower East Side: Jewish Delis & Knishes

As we reached the Lower East Side, our tour began to focus on Jewish cuisine and history. First, we filled up on knishes, a hearty snack food brought to New York by Jewish people in the 1900s.  A knish (pronounced kuh-nish) is made from a filling covered in dough and then baked. Like so many traditional dishes, a knish is classic “peasant food” – cheap to prepare, hearty and filling.

We stopped at Yonah Shimmel, a kosher bakery and New York institution which has been selling knishes on the Lower East Side since 1890. It’s the last place in Manhattan that makes knishes onsite. It’s still a family owned business to this day, the present owner is Yonah’s great-nephew, Alex Wolfman. The walls are plastered with photographs of famous customers and postcards with autographs, including Larry David, Francis Ford Coppola, Martha Stewart and Larry David.

First we tried a traditional knish, filled with warm mashed potato. It’s easy to see why these would have been a popular staple, particularly in the icy New York winters! We followed up with a dessert knish, filled with blueberries and cream cheese.

Yonah Shimmel has a wide range of sweet and savoury knishes, and also sells a range of other traditional Yiddish dishes such as matzah ball soup, homemade borscht, and potato latkes. You can also get a classic New York egg cream, which is a sweet drink once popular in soda fountains across the city, made from milk, seltzer water and syrup.

Yonah Shimmel is also quite close to two other famous Jewish institutions in New York: Russ & Daughters and Katz’ Delicatessen. These weren’t part of the tour, but I looped back later to check them out.

Lower East Side: German Pretzels

When I thought about immigrant influence in New York City, it was Jewish, Chinese and Italian culture that first came to mind. Perhaps some Russian, Ukrainian, Jamaican and Polish too. German culture & cuisine was something I completely overlooked, and our guide, Brian, told us why at our final stop on the tour, as we nibbled on pretzels and in a German biergarten.

German cuisine has had an enormous impact not just on New York’s cuisine, but American cuisine. It ranges from classic New York street food like pretzels and hot dogs to “All American” classics like burgers, lager-style beers like Budweiser and apple pie. Even the traditions of Christmas came to America from Germany!

There are two historical reasons the German influence on New York and America is less obvious.

The PS Slocum Disaster

The first reason is the PS Slocum Disaster. In the late 19th & early 20th century there was a larger German community living in the Lower East Side. On a summer’s day in June, 1904, a Lutheran church chartered a boat, the PS Slocum, to take 1300 residents to the North Shore of Long Island for a day trip. Most of the passengers were women and children from the German community. There was a lot of excitement in the community for such an excursion and the chance to see the city skyline from the river. However, as the ship sailed up East River, a fire broke out on board and quickly engulfed the ship in flames. Most of the passengers could not swim, and as later investigations found, the life vests and life rafts were mouldy and unfit for use and there was no emergency procedure in place. 1021 innocent people died, most of them women and children.

This was the largest disaster in terms of death toll in the United States, until 9/11 in 2001. It had a devastating impact on the German community, and many of those who were left behind left New York and dispersed through the United States. It broke up the German immigrant community in New York for the first time.

World War II

The second reason is World War II. After the war, it was very unpopular to be German, so people with German heritage made a conscious effort to become culturally American. Rather than abandoning their customs, they made them American.

I found it fascinating to learn how food traditions can adapt to survive and how different cultures food traditions are now celebrated (Italian, Chinese, Jewish) and how others live on but under a different flag (German).

I loved learning about how different cultures had shaped New York’s cuisine, hearing the stories of these communities and seeing (and tasting) how they keep food traditions alive today. Beyond food, it’s clear that New York’s immigrant history is what makes New York City one of the most dynamic and enigmatic cities in the world.

Have you been to the Lower East Side or gone on a great walking tour in New York? Do you have any interesting history about New York to share? Let me know in the comments!