Fishs Eddy’s Vintage Plate Museum Is Now Giving Tours | Eater NY

"Downstairs the store is the business, but upstairs feels like a museum; Julie Gaines jokes that it’s “the biggest gift shop for the smallest museum.” Open since 1986 and started after she earned an art degree, Fishs Eddy was built on deadstock—dishes, water glasses, and soup bowls rescued from a Bowery basement, polished up and sold as reasonably priced treasures. I learned that Gaines and co-founder David Lenovitz began by scavenging restaurant supply basements and flea markets, and today the shop draws nostalgic locals, budget-conscious twenty-somethings, and tourists from around the world. She began offering public tours of the once-hidden upstairs collection over the last two years (announced on Fishs Eddy’s Instagram), where she keeps at least thousands of plates, mugs, butter dishes, and pitchers stacked throughout the room as examples of early marketing and a disappearing era of American restaurantware. The pandemic threatened the business, and Gaines—who lives with multiple sclerosis and sometimes uses a cane—was buoyed when “the last standing manufacturer” called with enough restaurantware to keep the store from closing; she hopes to preserve the collection and eventually open a museum to safeguard this chapter of dining history." - Jason Diamond