Description

In 97 Orchard, Jane Ziegelman examines the culinary life which was one's heart and spirit of New York's Lower East Area round the turn of the last century—a city inside a city, where Germans, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews attemptedto create a new life. Through the activities of five households, them all residents of 97 Orchard Street, Ziegelman takes visitors on a vibrant and memorable visit, from impossibly crowded tenement flats, down candle lit stairwells, beyond the leading stoops wherever housewives congregated, and out in to the commotion of the filthy, teeming streets. Ziegelman displays immigrant chefs introduced their genius for the everyday job of feeding their own families, protecting customs at home but usually prepared to improvise how. 97 Orchard lays bare the roots of our combined culinary history.