Barney Greengrass
Order the smoked sturgeon. Ligaya Mishan, in the Times, calls it as meaty as steak and buttery-sweet,
cut with laser precision every time.5 The title came off a customer: James J. Frawley, a Tammany Hall man in the thirties, called the shop The Sturgeon King.1
Why go
Barney Greengrass opened in Harlem in 1908 and moved to Amsterdam Avenue in 1938.4 Gary Greengrass owns it now, the third generation on the door.3 His son Moe is nineteen, at NYU, and next in line. Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote his last Yiddish stories across the street at the Belnord, came in for smoked lake sturgeon. Groucho Marx, Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe ate here. Irving Berlin took four quarts of borscht a week. The wallpaper still shows old New Orleans, and Gary had decorative artists repair it during the pandemic. Moe says even the wallpaper smells of fish and onions.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the sturgeon scrambled with eggs and onions. It is sweet from the caramelized onions and comes with a bagel to scoop it onto.4
- Order: an appetizing platter for the table, with the fish you pick plus bagels, cream cheese, onion, tomato and capers.4
- Order: the latkes, which are off the menu. The potatoes go in as uneven shreds and chunks and come out fluffy under a shell.4
- Avoid: eggs with no fish in them. Julien Levy says that is a lot of money for eggs.2
What locals & experts say
- David Remnick, The New Yorker, June 2026:
Barney Greengrass lands in the Times Top One Hundred restaurants as reliably as Atomix and Le Bernardin.
1 - Julien Levy, Time Out New York, July 2026, at three stars: he does not think it is the best food in the city and sends you anyway.
Go to Barney Greengrass for the experience of going to Barney Greengrass,
he writes, and then tells you to order the sturgeon.2 - Will Hartman, who rated it 8.4 for The Infatuation in January 2025:
The fine-tuned shtick is why we love coming back to Barney Greengrass again and again.
4 - Robert Sietsema, Eater NY, on his vital Jewish delis: he counts the meat side a working deli, with pastrami, tongue, turkey, salami and chopped liver
at prices a bit below par.
6 - Anthony Bourdain, as Charlotte Druckman reports him in Grub Street: he called this
the best breakfast in the universe.
3
Good to know
- Paying: cash only, and there are no reservations.2
- Closed: Mondays.2
- The line: it runs long at weekends.1
- The table: a server may tell you flatly that they want it back when you have eaten.4
- The merch: Moe put the Knicks on a T-shirt and turned the black-and-white cookies blue and orange.3
Jeff's take (his words)
Not on Jeff's saved list. He named the place on 3 September 2026 and asked for it.
Verdict
should-visit — Go on a weekday, when you can sit down and finish a plate. A hundred and eighteen years of the same room is the thing you are buying.