A Root With Roots

It was not a big crowd.

OK. It was not a crowd. It was about a dozen shivering people who gathered Tuesday in front of the modest, two-floor building in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Gold's Horseradish was born 75 years ago this week.

See? That's why it wasn't a crowd.

Horseradish just doesn't get the kind of respect that is given to, say, caviar — or even ketchup. There's something a little homely about the condiment, in part because to Jews, at least, it has long starred at Passover as the personification of all that is bad. When we want to remember the bitter taste of our years as slaves in Egypt, what do we eat?

Yup. And then, as if we haven't just said this is the worst stuff on earth, we bring out gefilte fish and eat it with more horseradish, some of us unsure which taste is supposed to be masking the other.

Still, Americans — and not just Jews — manage to eat 6 million gallons of the stuff every year, according to the totally unbiased Horseradish Information Council (motto: "America's Favorite Root"), and Gold's is going great guns.

How many national businesses started by an immigrant granny in her kitchen are you aware of?

This was reason enough for a smattering of local officials to show up and officially proclaim this a historic moment, day, building — something. In truth, it was hard to concentrate on what anyone was proclaiming because we were on the sidewalk, freezing.

Luckily, the building is owned now by contractor Abdul Sageer, and he let us come inside and hear what had happened there so long ago. "This is the first I heard about it, too!" he said.

"It was 1932, the depths of the Depression," Marc Gold, the company's marketing manager, began, "and my grandmother, Tillie Gold, asked herself, 'What don't people like to do?'"

Apparently she answered herself, "Make horseradish," because that's what she proceeded to do.

As she grated the pungent herb — her eyes and nose streaming — her husband, Hyman, filled slim, six-sided jars with the stuff and started peddling them to the local groceries.

Gradually the business grew from pushcart to bike to truck to the suburbs, where now third- and even fourth-generation Golds run it, somewhat fanatically.

"When you say 'horseradish' and people say 'gefilte fish,' it's very annoying because they're not thinking of all its other great uses," Howard Gold, the company's production manager, said. "It's terrific on meat, any fish, salmon, brisket, any sandwich, turkey …"

"And latkes," his cousin Marc added, referring to the potato pancakes Jews eat on Hanukkah, the holiday that began at sundown on Dec. 4. "You have to put it on latkes."

"You have to put it on tuna fish," Howie added.

"And it's a big Christmas item," Marc said. Sure it is.

Every morning, these cousins (and two more) start their business meeting with tomato juice mixed with you-know-what. And yet here in the neighborhood where it all began, the locals do not seem very familiar with the root.

"My wife is the one who tries everything," Sageer said, politely sidestepping the question of how he liked it.

Ashraf Mian, the editor of a Pakistani weekly now housed in the building, has never tried it either. Next door, at a Western Union office catering to a Mexican clientele, the proprietor knew what it was "because (he) worked in a restaurant." But he hadn't made it part of his pantry.

Still, all these men, they did have one thing in common with Tillie Gold: They'd made it to Brooklyn and were working hard.

Plus, there were probably some tears along the way.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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