The Pickle Guys
The pickles here sit in a natural salt brine with garlic and spices, no preservatives, for up to three months in the barrel. The longer they sit the sourer they get, so time in the barrel is your order. In the two weeks before Passover the shop grinds fresh horseradish outside the door on Grand Street.
Why go
Essex Street had pickle shops going back to 1910 and this one says it is the last of them, and it trades now on Grand Street.1 The recipe they work from is Eastern European and they date it to the same year, and the owners claim over a hundred years of pickling between them. The rest of the case runs from sauerkraut and Russell borscht to pickled pineapple, mango, apples, brussels sprouts and daikon.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a kosher sour dill, which is the long end of the barrel.1
- Order, the outlier: pickled pineapple.1
- Avoid: reaching for the new dills if what you want is a full sour. The counter sells both ends of the cure, the new and the full sour.
What locals & experts say
- The shop, on its own method: the pickles cure
in a natural salt brine, infused with garlic and spices, for up to three months without any preservatives.
1 - I have not found a New York critic writing about this counter.
Good to know
- Kosher: certified.1
- Booking: none. It is a shop with barrels.
Verdict
could-visit — Every substantive claim on this page is the shop's own, which is a real limit and is why the rung sits here. What it does state is checkable at the barrel and specific: a cure measured in months, an Eastern European recipe they date to 1910, and over a hundred years of pickling between the owners. The counter sells both ends of that cure, the new and the full sour, so a reader who knows the number can order either. I have not found a New York critic who has written about it, and the claim to be the last pickle store on Essex Street is theirs too.