Ear­li­er this week, Lau­ra Sil­ver wrote about the knish as an instru­ment of social jus­tice. She is the author of the book Knish: In Search of the Jew­ish Soul Food and has been blog­ging here this week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

Dumplings and samosas and empanadas may have become the promi­nent street foods of mod­ern-day New York, but they have not com­plete­ly eclipsed the pas­try beloved by Sholom Ale­ichem and Isaac Baschevis Singer, Mol­ly Picon and Joan Rivers.

Enough with the com­plain­ing. You can find a good knish, you just have to know where to look. Sure, the knish will nev­er be exact­ly as it was in 1950, 1960 or even 1975. It’s rare — but not impos­si­ble — to find a per­son sell­ing knish­es on the Coney Island board­walk or the sands of Brighton Beach. In the last few years I’ve received mul­ti­ple (and unre­lat­ed) reports of a man who has revived the ​“Hot Knish­es” cry of years past and a woman who sells home­made pota­to pies from a shop­ping cart on Sun­days, over­look­ing the ocean, off Still­well Avenue, a stone’s throw from Nathan’s.

If you’re not game for the chase, more than two dozen bricks and mor­tar estab­lish­ments offer savory and sweet pies of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ish ori­gin. Yon­ah Shimmel’s on Manhattan’s Hous­ton Street and Knish Nosh on Queens Boule­vard (with a satel­lite loca­tion on the tony shores of Cen­tral Park’s Con­ser­va­to­ry Water) are the best known, but they are far from alone. Knish-pos­i­tive kosher delis and spe­cial­ty shops mark the five bor­oughs and beyond. Find­ing a good knish involves adopt­ing a pos­ture of humil­i­ty, har­ness­ing a sense of adven­ture and hon­ing one’s knish-dar. Not all of the entries are obvi­ous to the unini­ti­at­ed. Judy’s Knish­es, found­ed by Low­er East Side native Judy Hiller-Schwartz, is head­quar­tered in the Avenue A‑based kitchen of its name­sake, and expects to gain a foothold at Malt and Mold, the neighborhood’s high-end beer-and-cheese pur­vey­or in the com­ing months. (Fel­low knish entre­pre­neur Noah Wild­man of Knish­eryNYC sold his pota­to and kasha wares there to the delight of Flo­rence Fabricant.)

If all else fails, there’s a map. The ini­tial iter­a­tion of this first-ever knish lover’s guide details more than thir­ty hot spots, from Man­hat­tan to the greater met­ro­pol­i­tan area, and is grow­ing dai­ly in entries and geo­graph­ic reach. But it’s just the begin­ning. This map works best when knish-o-philes and cur­mud­geons alike con­tribute insid­er tips.

Feast your eyes and don’t be shy. Our com­mu­nal knish con­scious­ness depends on you. All fla­vors wel­comed; no opin­ion too heated. 

Share your favorite local or inter­na­tion­al knish spot at www​.knish​.me/map.

Lau­ra Sil­ver is an award-win­ning jour­nal­ist whose writ­ing on food and cul­ture has appeared in The New York Times and the For­ward and on NPR. Lau­ra has been a writer in res­i­dence at the Mil­lay Colony, the Banff Cen­tre, and the New York Pub­lic Library. She is con­sid­ered the world’s lead­ing expert on the knish.

Relat­ed Content:

• Read­ing List: Low­er East Side
• Food: Jew­ish Perspectives
• Essays: Food, Eat­ing, and Recipes