Where are you from? asked the man unloading potato sacks from the truck after he had seen us photographing the entrance to the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery. From Croatia? Of course I know. My wife is Polish and she makes me an excellent Vegeta soup. A few spoonfuls of Vegeta in some hot water and the soup is tasty.

A simple soup recipe made with Vegeta herbs is more than apt for the place where we are, because the business premises, where the man is unloading the potatoes into the basement street window, is an ode to poor-man’s food and one of the surviving remains of the old, emigrant New York from more than a hundred years ago.