October 2026 Book Review
Review of Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder. The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2026.
Reviewed by Rich Robinson
Yes, this is really a book about pickles (and Jews). And it’s not only about New York, but traverses the globe through history and by providing a kind of mini-encyclopedia of pickle-producing companies over the last century or so. It sounds quirky, but pickled foods have been part and parcel of human culture for a long, long time.
The authors work at Mattmo Creative, “a communication and design agency rooted in Amsterdam’s historic Jewish neighborhood,” according to the Introduction, which also explains that, “before World War II, Amsterdam was home to over five hundred pickle vendors and fifty pickle businesses, many run by Jewish families who immigrated from Eastern Europe.” Sadly, “the story of pickles is also one of loss. Many of Amsterdam’s pickle makers, predominantly Jewish, were murdered in the Holocaust, leaving a void in the city’s cultural landscape that still lingers.”
Whether in Europe, North America, or elsewhere, pickles and pickled foods have been staples of Jewish cuisine and a part of at least some global Jewish cultures.
Richly illustrated (though I wish some of the pictures were larger), we learn that, among other things,
Sauerkraut was used to prevent scurvy.
International Pickle Week started in 1948.
Pickle juice can prevent dehydration and cramped muscles.
There has been a resurgence of pickled foods by restaurant and health advocates.
The 2020 movie An American Pickle featured Seth Rogen playing his grandfather who is preserved in a vat of pickles and wakes up in 21st-century Brooklyn, New York.
The “pickle barrel” was a Dutch invention.
Romanian pastrami was originally made from goose, not beef.
Long Island, New York, was a huge pickle-producing location until the emergence of “white pickle disease” in the 1920s forced the area to switch over to potato farming.
Some of the book is descriptive prose; other parts are lists of pickle companies and the like, often focused on the United States and especially New York City. Jewish delicatessens and “appetizing” stores are chronicled, the difference being between meat stores and those serving “dairy,” meaning in the Jewish context of New York, non-meat.
The last part of the book goes international, covering Korea’s kimchi (“a nutritional powerhouse”), China’s pickled dishes, India’s achar, Japan’s tsukemono, the ceviche of Peru, Russia’s use of sour pickles with vodka, and then on to Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and the Netherlands.
I remember growing up in Brooklyn and eating at Grabstein’s Deli, with their metal bowls overflowing with sour and semi-sour pickles. They were crunchy and delicious and I couldn’t get enough of them. You may never look at pickles in the same way after perusing The Pickled City. It’s an entertaining, sometimes dry, list-intensive, picture-heavy look at what has been a historic part of Jewish (and other) cultures and which is currently experiencing something of a culinary revival. Enjoy and eat healthy!