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M & I International Food
Sahadi's Trading Comany
Sunshine Pickles

China Food Import Company
Pickle pilgrims on the hunt for Chinese specialties need not travel any farther than this little shop on the corner of Lafayette and Grand. You'll know it by the make-shift window display, where sunlight streams through colorful brine-filled jars suspended on a string. You'll know it from the heavy, pungent air that swirls around the store, with pockets of concentration hovering over the knee-high clay pots that hold everything from pickled turnips to pickled scallions. And you'll know it by the crowds, who all come for the same things: pickles imported straight from China, the likes of which you won't find anywhere else.

Mary and Robert Ng opened China Food Import Corp in 1985, on Mott Street, in the heart of Manhattan's Chinatown. But since a large part of their business involves wholesale to restaurants and stores, they moved from that traffic-clogged street to the fringe of the neighborhood in 1996, so that trucks would have an easier time coming and going. Now, the Ngs ship these goods to devoted customers in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, and Ohio.

A New York native with a friendly voice that hints at her Queen's upbringing, Mary Ng can tell you anything you want to know about Chinese pickles. For customers who are untrained in such matters, she kindly identifies what's what - the "chili vegetable" is a bulbous root vegetable preserved with salt and chilies. She'll tell you that it makes a rich stock, or that it can be served alongside cooked pork. The tiny, brown strips are pickled turnips. There's garlic, ginger, and shallots in a Chinese vinegar brine. Where's the pickled, fermented black beans? In the next shipment - she'll call you when it comes in.

Robert Ng, originally from Hong Kong, and his son, Mike, ladle these pickles into plastic containers and bags. The most popular item is one that they make in house - the pickled sweet/sour mustard greens and salted turnips, sold in plastic bags next to the cash registers.
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M & I International Food
New York's pickle central has a new home: Brighton Beach Avenue, just one block from the salty sea air the blows along the boardwalk down to Coney Island.

100 years ago, while the Lower East Side was teeming with the city's newest arrivals, Brighton Beach was the playground for its wealthiest natives. The old beach bungalows have been replaced by glitzy seaside discos with signs in Cyrillic, and the old Victorian hotels, by high-rise condos that are home to the largest Russian population this side of the Atlantic. One block north, the stores that line Brighton Beach Avenue display the kind of abundance and variety that would have been unthinkable in Russia 20 years ago - and the loftiest of these is M&I International Foods, culinary hub of Little Odessa.

"Watermelon pickles. Cucumber pickles. Soft Cabbage pickles. Tomato pickles. The Russians, they eat a lot of pickles," says co-owner Sofia Vinokurav, a bright-eyed woman with the energy of a teenager, as she zips past the deli cases filled with pickled fruit, vegetables and fish. "In Russia, you used to prepare things for the whole year round. My mother used to make them, and I remember, there was a special cabinet where she held them all."

Sophia opened a small store with her husband, brother and sister 26 years ago, 2 years after emigrating from Odessa, and over the years, it's expanded into the towering two-story store/café that it is today. People come from all over to taste the Russian specialties that they make in house, like smoked and cured meat and fish, vareneky (meat-and-cheese-filled dumplings), and of course, pickles. In addition to homemade pickles based on Sophia's family's recipe, M&I carries a wide selection of pickled goods in cans and jars.

The fresh pickle selection changes seasonally - in the summer, a salty-sweet slice of watermelon tangled in fresh dill. In the fall, golden apples, pickled with cabbage and salt, served cold alongside main-dish meats. And all year round, the bright green cucumber pickles, brined with vodka and salt, rather than vinegar. The taste is incomparably fresh - the perfect nosh for a summer stroll down the boardwalk.
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Sahadi's Trading Company
Charlie Sahadi knows pickles. He knows the difference between Bulgarian and French cornichons. He can tell you what goes into a fine-flavored giardiniera mix. He'll inform you of the Lebanese name for the pickled eggplant with walnuts and garlic (it's mackdous), and what kind of vegetable you're pointing to in the Lebanese Mikty (it's a cross between a cucumber and a squash).

You'd think he'd keep his famous, hundred-year-old family recipe for lift (pronounced lif-it) to himself, but he won't: the sweet, tangy cubed turnips are pickled in homemade beet juice, salt, and vinegar. Of the startling array of pickled things he and his family imports from all over the world (mainly the Middle East), the Lebanese lift is the one made in house, as it has been ever since they opened their doors at 187 Atlantic Avenue in 1948.

Sahadi Importing runs four generations deep, which is why Charlie knows so much. When his father, Robert, emigrated from Lebanon in 1919, he went to work at the original Sahadi's on Washington Street in Manhattan. At that time, the area was known as "Little Lebanon," and his cousin Abraham Sahadi had been selling chickpeas and other Lebanese specialties to the growing population since the 1890s. In the forties, many of the residents moved to Brooklyn (displaced by the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel), settling on Atlantic Avenue, between Hicks and Court. Today, Charlie runs the store with his wife, Audrey, and their son, Ron. Their daughter, Christine Whalen, works closely with the family business, and her children know more about pickles than any of their peers.

People come from all over the city to scoop up pounds of preserved lemons from Israel, little dill pickles from Poland, and every kind of olive imaginable from the big, wooden barrels that flank one wall of the store. They buy grains and spices and dried fruit in bulk from open burlap sacks. They shop the shelves for Middle Eastern specialties like pickled Z'atar leaf and thin, hot peppers in brine. They take home breads, cheese, and prepared foods. And they always know who to go to with their pickle questions.
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Sunshine Pickles
Since this interview, Sunshine has left NJ to focus on their plant in Las Vegas, NV. We miss them...
The tradition of kosher pickling is in full swing 45 minutes from the city, in Totowa, New Jersey - home base for Sunshine pickles, the nation's largest producer's of fresh (as compared to jarred, fermented) pickles. The NY Food Museum the pleasure of touring Sunshine's state-of-the-art pickle production facility, and talking with owner Bill Rosenblum. Mr. Rosenblum, who's family was in the business of Kosher food distribution, purchased Sunshine Pickles from the Flax family in the '90s. The Flax's started Sunshine in 1951, and though Mr. Rosenblum continues the strict Kosher tradition, he's also proved himself a modern pickle pioneer. New methods of cleaning and brining, newly patented, completely bio-degradable packaging, and bold new flavors are among these successes. He talks about the innovations in his field:

"Now part of my interest in buying this company was that I always loved pickles. You know, when you start your second life, your second childhood, you ask yourself what you like. I like pickles. I'm a food guy. And I wanted to get back to making the products, not just selling them.

"… we've taken an industry that has a lot of lineage and history, a lot of good old fashioned family recipes, kept them, and moved on to what we call a plant today, that works within the guidelines of food science. So we took an industry of mom and pop, grandma and grandpa - they made great pickles - but like all other food products, they now have to be … compliant with food industry standards.

"What we've done is take an old industry, captured the taste, but taken it to a different level of food science and sanitation. We have four people here who have been to study food science in order to help pickles be a part of the future. Food, agriculture, health and sanitation standards are important, but it had to keep the flavor. And it has kept the flavor. With these cleaning and washing methods, we actually lengthen the life of the pickle. There are things that happen to pickles when you don't clean them, reactions that aren't really dangerous, but aren't really good either. … Its called "bringing it back to neutral" - a good, crisp, cucumber. And we do the same thing with the water, we purify it, and purify it again to bring it back to neutral. There's nothing in there that we're putting in, but it's developed to a point that it can't conflict with the taste. Even natural chemicals, we take them out.

"And now, we're national, and we work with many national restaurant chains, national gaming groups, national parks. We sell to every national casino in the U.S. And now, we make unique items, customized items, for these clients. It's interesting, how the taste for pickles changes across the country. For example, the half sours, these only go to the Northeast, but take it outside, and people say, "hey, if I wanted a cucumber, I'd buy a cucumber." If you go to the south, you'll sell nothing but Kosher Dills. And just a clarification - a kosher dill means a style, more than it means kosher. It just so happens that we make a Kosher, Kosher-style pickle.

"First of all, Kosher evolved, in pickles, in particular, due to supplying Kosher delis. The number of kosher delis left today is a fraction of what's it used to be. There used to be dozens in the Bronx. So Kosher meant Kosher establishment, so it was called Kosher because your product had to be Rabbinically supervised, and in the case of Rabbinical supervision today, every ingredient that goes into a product has to be kosher - the spice, the salt, every ingredient has to be named Kosher beforehand. The Kosher Dill, for example, the dill has to be Kosher. Even the bread and butter. Everything.

"So supplying Kosher establishments, that's how we got into it. That said, with nothing religious in mind, means that a kosher label takes it [pickle] to a higher level of cleanliness and consistency. So a lot of people buy kosher, who don't even keep kosher, but they're willing to spend a bit more for a better product. Hebrew National, for example, 80 percent of their hot dogs are sold to non-Jews. There's a lot to be said for it, and it's worth it to us to go through the extra procedure. And from a business standpoint, its got better acceptance. So we extend that tradition to our newer, non-traditional products. So its not even Kosher for Kosher, but Kosher for quality."
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