Every day for Brian begins the night before. Brian’s driving shift starts at 1AM, so he has his morning coffee before midnight. Just after midnight, he’s in his car driving from his home in Queens to the Acme Smoked Fish headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn listening to the 1010 traffic report. He usually punches in early. Today is no different, and Brian punches in at 12:53AM.
Brian is a tall, broad-shouldered man with a goatee. His facial ex...
I walk into the office at 9AM, Monday through Friday, and each day the place is already buzzing. The trucks are on the road, the air freight is in the sky, and the phones are ringing off the hook. There are a million things to do, but I get my coffee, grab a bagel, some smoked salmon and cream cheese, and then I sit down at my desk to start the day’s work. When I first started at Acme Smoked Fish Corporation, I used to get in in the morning, ...
Robert Caslow (above left, next to the late Eric Caslow) reflects on his time at Acme and the next chapter ahead.
How did it all start for you?
I’m going to go back to the time when my grandfather— Harry Brownstein, who started this business—was still alive. So that was the early 1960s. I used to follow him down to the Fulton Fish Market. We’d go from stall to stall and it seemed to me that he knew everybody. I didn’t know if he was visiting o...
Frank Pinello continues his Frank Experience adventures by checking out the Acme Smoked Fish factory headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Frank learns what it takes to go from a full salmon to the finely sliced lox that’s become an iconic New York City staple. From filleting to brining to smoking to slicing, it's all done by hand at Acme, and Frank was there to learn every step of the process.
In his new TODAY All Day series “Family Style,” Al Roker explores New York City to learn about the origins of bagels and lox. Al visits Russ & Daughters where he learns how to slice smoked salmon, then he tours one of the largest fish smokehouses in the U.S. For a taste of the future, he also learns how to make vegan "lox" from cured carrots.
If you visit Acme Smoked Fish’s headquarters in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood on Friday morning, you’ll find a scene that is anything but corporate.
A line of customers snakes out the door, with a wait-time that can run upward of 30 minutes. Inside, controlled chaos prevails as patrons grab package after package of smoked salmon or put in requests for unwrapped fish that is sold by weight, all at prices that can be up to 50% under retail.
If Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the fourth largest in the country, and with that comes a sprawling mecca of diversity that has attracted people to its shores for centuries. Often overlooked by tourists and even some Manhattanites, Brooklyn’s rich history, centers of creativity, and unique food offerings provide a laundry list of attractions. Here’s a list of eight things to do in Brooklyn that may even surprise some New Yorkers.
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