SOMETIMES MORE THAN A LITTLE IS ALREADY TOO MUCH

You remember the old joke: “Where’s the best place to hide an elephant? Right out in the open.” I’ve visited New York at least 50 times since my teens, but just two weeks ago, I found the elephant right in Upper Manhattan, and it’s been there only 100 years.

Recently, Linda and I sought a breakfast place that served good smoked fish. There are plenty delis and diners in New York that serve smoked fish, but my son Googled and found only one at which smoked fish ruled by mandate. Barney Greengrass.

I felt like an idiot not knowing about the place, because Christopher Columbus dined on lox and bagels there immediately upon discovering America. Coke boasts that “It’s the real thing,” but it will not vie for Barney’s authenticity. Indeed, authenticity is the first thing that catches your eye: Roll-up windows with gilt lettering worn by decades of up-and-down. Bulk dairy products behind the counter, right from the cow, which only experienced countermen are allowed to touch.

The place is thoroughly Jewish, yet there is not one silly picture of Tevya or Yiddish admonition, "ess, ess mein kind," on the wall. Greengrass is still real after a century, not going for cheap nostalgia.

The variety of home-cured and smoked fish is exhaustive. Salmon is baked or broiled. It is smoked into lox, nova, gravlax. It is pickled with and without sour cream, fried and scrambled with eggs. Herring is pickled, schmaltz, matjes, creamed, fried. Trout. Sable. Whitefish. Kippers. Sprats. Sardines. Char. And this too: They know how to fry an egg. The bagels and bialys are superior.

Enough!

All right, they also serve Beluga caviar. But do you mean that Barney’s patrons would eat it on a bagel washed down with a glass of heise tai? At best, cruel satire.

Unlike other delis where portions are phantasmagoric, Barney’s are not huge, but appropriate. As Mama taught me, "You shouldn't see tooth-marks in the lox when you bite into a sandwich. Anything more is uberik (over the top).” Barney has taught four generations that smoked fish's virtue is in its moderation. It is a jewel from Tiffany, not the schlock you find on eBay.