Hempstead, NY – Marc Gold has a dream to make his cold borscht cool again.
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Borscht, an old world beet soup long savored by Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, lent its name to the Catskill region of upstate New York where generations of revelers summered at hotels such as the Concord and Grossinger’s. In the “Borscht Belt,” the fuchsia-hued concoction was sipped liberally—either from a glass as a refreshing drink or from a bowl as a hearty warm soup.
“Summer used to be borscht season,” says Mr. Gold, chief executive of Gold Pure Food Products Co., based here. Several times a week, he recalls, “we would ship it in trailers—40- to 52-foot-trailers” each packed with 1,000 cases of bottled borscht headed to supermarkets.
In the 1950s, ads for the stuff featured a jar outfitted with a beret and sunglasses. “Be a Beet-Nik…Get Cool, Man!”
These days, the borscht business is beat. Mr. Gold recently watched as one of his workers loaded a truck with just 360 cases of his 79-year-old family company’s recipe. Mark Dewey, whose Dewey Produce Inc. in Byron, N.Y., grew beets for nearly all the borscht makers in the Northeast, says his shipments to borscht producers have dropped to just 200 tons a year, down from 1,750 tons a year in borscht’s heyday.
Mr. Gold’s own son, Shaun, 19, admits he’s never even tasted it.
So blue were borscht’s prospects that Mr. Gold once suggested to his father that they remove a colorful image of a borscht jar from the company’s trucks and feature one of the newer Gold offerings. “I said, ‘Dad let’s replace the borscht with duck sauce,”‘ he says. “It was the future and borscht was yesterday.”
Borscht was brought to America by Eastern European Jews, says Andrew F. Smith, culinary historian at The New School, a university in New York City. But its origins are unclear and the stuff of debate. Certainly not only Jews like it—it remains a staple in Russia, Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe, Prof. Smith said.
Unwilling to yield to beet defeat, Mr. Gold, his brother Steven and their two cousins, Howard and Neil, decided to soldier on—even as other local borscht makers abandoned the business and gave Gold Pure Food their contracts to supply the soup.
Now the Golds say they are determined to revive the yen for borscht by latching onto appetites for healthy fare—or riding the nostalgic culinary wave for fads of the 1950s and 1960s, like cupcakes and seltzer water.
Compared to other “heimeshe” junk foods like chulent and kishka which are major factors in the poor health of many frum yidden, borshct is actually quite healthy and heart-friendly. Unfortunately, if all the chassdim coming to the rebbe’s tisch one shabbos found that the menu had changed to borscht, the gaaborim would be placed in charem.
the first step is to make sure its “billig vee borscht”
Hey #1 , if the “heimishe junk foods like chulent and kishka” would be indulged in only on Shabbos Kodesh and in moderation, guaranteed they would not figure as “major factors in poor health of many frum yidden.” It is the “fressing” of junk foods and overeating every day of the week that brings on the health problems.
I don’t understand that last line–cupcakes and seltzer are nostalgic foods from the 50s and 60s? I didn’t even realize they had taken a hiatus!
I live in Ukraine and have lived in Russia. Gold’s is not the real thing. I’m being polite. And there is no T sound at the end of the word borsch in Russian. I wonder how it came to be called that in Yiddish, or if that is an Americanism.
Chulent and Kishka is not junk food; it is poor man’s food. It got started in Eastern Europe because that is all the people could afford. Potatoes were all around so were
onions, beans and carrots. Kushka was made with chicken fat, cows intestines, and more potatoes. If you had money you put meat in the chulent if not you put a marrow bone for flavor. In Arab countries inside of potatoes they used rice and chick peas. Many of the Sefardi people put the rice in a sack like a pillow case to cook in the chulent. It is amazing how we don’t know from where it came
I grew up with Borscht and sour creme, it’s so good. It’s a real shame that some people have never tasted it.
Schav also tasted good, but it always got stuck in my teeth.
I, for one still have Gold’s borscht with sour cream from Pesach thru the summer. What a mechaya!
It’s not a billig as borscht anyomre at $1.29 a jar.
Maybe they lost customers when they left their McDonald Ave plant in Brooklyn for Hempstead.
Borscht in a jar is not the same as home made. There are so many things that are missing!! I know. M
we have all turned into rabbits.
all we are supposed to eat is veggies and fruits.
ehhhhh, whats up doc!
We buy one jar of borscht for Pesach because my husband likes it, thinks it helps digest all that matza. But, I never eat/drink it myself, even though I know it tastes pretty good with potatoes and sour cream. I know it’s not as authentic as real Ukrainian borsch like in the alte heim, so what? Why shouldn’t it make a comeback with a new fresh twist to it?
Borscht, feh, the bane of my life!