CHAPTER 3 YESTERYEAR: A Journey Down the Borscht River

EATING MY WAY THROUGH MY ANCESTORS’ FOOD, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.

- Jason Diamond

In keeping with family tradition, I was broke when I moved to New York in 2003. I wasn’t immigrant poor like my mother’s family was when they arrived in the 1900s, after escaping the czar, or like my father and his parents were when they landed a few decades later, after fleeing the Nazis. I had no money because I was 23 years old and all I wanted was to be a writer. I’d saved up a few thousand dollars for the move, and two hours after my bus pulled up at Port Authority, once I’d paid rent and other expenses, I was down to $500. That night, after blowing $50 of them at bars around Tompkins Square Park, I started to worry that I was going to be out on the street within a week. By 3 a.m., when my friends and I walked into a diner on Avenue A called Odessa, I wasn’t sure I should be spending any more, but then I looked at the menu and saw that I could order not only a plate of pierogi but also a side of latkes—which I’d been raised to believe could only be eaten during the eight nights of Hanukkah—for about $15. I knew I would walk out full and have leftovers for breakfast.