"finally this is where my digestive system longed for" "What in the hell has brought about the alleged mass exodus of delis from Brooklyn?   When I left there, fifty years ago (40 of which I have lived in rural isolation in southern appalachia), there were multi hundreds, many of them superb.   We just took them for granted, like the automat, and "the papers," i.e., the News and the Mirror."

"I live in Montreal and I cant find a decent kosher smoked meat sandwich for the life of me. What I have is a 1000 variations of coucous. You can die from that Moc/Israeli garbage…Give me flanken or give me death. If there is any women out there who can cook up a mean flanken, give me a buzz. Flanken Now!" "I am 11 years old and working on an important  history project–my topic is Schwartz’s in Montreal.  I found your web site while doing my research.  Your writing is really interesting and I wanted to let you now that I believe in Save the Deli!    I hope you will write back — its okay with my mom that you send your reply to her email."

"I live in Midland, Ontario (close to Barrie) how do I find real chopped liver in this part of the world?.  For a guy who lived almost next door to the Carnegie Deli in NY for twenty years I feel like I’m in no-man’s land."

"i live in south florida since streits no longer makes old fashion farfel i am looking for a place that does make a farfel  product similar to theres i would appreciate any information you may have concerning the above thanking u inadvance"

"what is the origin of a deli sandwich being accompanied by a pickle spear?"

"I wonder if anyone can answer this question.  About 35 years ago I bought a 5 pound kosher salami.  It has been hanging on the wall for all this time in a room that is usually between 65 and 75 degrees.  There are no signs of deterioration, although, of course, it is knarly and wrinkled as an aged salami would be.  I have no intention of cutting into it, but I am curious if anyone knows or has opinions about how safe this 35 year old salami would be to eat."

The post What a Deli Lover Thinks appeared first on Jewcy.

Delis are funny places. Have you ever sulked out of a delicatessen feeling like the world is hopeless?

Heartburn…sure.

Twelve pound heavier…of course.

Shortchanged…often.

But I defy you to walk into a Jewish deli and walk out frowning. Because delis are comedic petri dishes, a place where the shtick seems to grow within, cultured and fed by schmaltz both metaphorical and literal.

Comedy in Jewish delicatessens was a natural thing. Considered that most Jews in the early 20^th century saw the deli as a safe refuge outside of synagogue and the workplace, it was probably a wonderful place to vent. Where better to gripe about the uppity rabbi or your sweatshop foreman than over pickles and a knish at the lunch counter? Where better to unleash that classic Yiddish sarcastic wit, full of double entendres, punch lines, and reverse wishes, than in the neighborhood deli.

Deli humor comes naturally, and seemingly out of nowhere. First, it’s inspired by the setting; bright, boisterous, loud places. Second, it’s encouraged by the service; quick, sharp-witted waiters, who aren’t afraid to tell the customer what do order. Once loosened up, the final blow is delivered by the food: large, sloppy portions with funny sounding names (kreplach, kishke, kugel) that defy any pretense of formality.

The very atmosphere of it seems to say "It’s ok, you can be a little loud in here, and don’t worry what everyone else hears, they’re in on the joke."

The result? Geniuses, like deli regulars Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, and Larry David. The gold of Milton Berle ("Anytime someone goes into a Jewish Delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere, a Jew dies."), and the quips and stories of Damon Runyon, who wrote that there are two kinds of people in this world, "Delicatessen people, and those I don’t associate with."

Would the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally have been as funny if it happened in a pizza shop or a diner? If Meg Ryan was screaming Yes Yes Yes over a split pea soup or club sandwich, would it have had the same effect? I don’t think so, but to clarify, I asked comedic great Mel Brooks for his opinion. As a lifetime deli eater, who grew up at delis in Brooklyn, cut his chops at the Stage, and now holds court at Factor’s and Junior’s in Los Angeles, he had the perfect analysis of why delis nurtured comedic genius.

"It’s very important." Brooks answered, "Because there are no tablecloths you don’t feel that you’re dining. At a deli you don’t waste a lot of time ordering the wines and eating. A deli is always en-route to something. You don’t spend two hours there, and if you’ve got things to do, deli is great…. There’s nothing like a deli meeting. Deli food keeps the brain cooking. I much prefer a plastic topped table to one with linens," Brooks said, hinting at the secret of deli comedy. "Delis are magnets for Jews, and Jews, in order to survive emotionally have developed tremendous humor. They don’t have to be professionals. Every Jew is a good storyteller, and delis are bound in Jewish humor. Also, delis seem to be happy places. I’ve never seen anybody weeping at a table in a deli. I’ve seen them in cafes and smart restaurants dabbing their eyes, but I’ve never seen anyone crying in a deli. Never in a deli! No one ever has a bottle of Dom Perignon with their lover and says ‘This isn’t working out’. Cel-Ray tonic doesn’t cut it."

The post What’s So Funny About a Jewish Deli? appeared first on Jewcy.

Once upon a time, the delicatessen was the third pole of Jewish American communal life. The other two were the synagogue, where people prayed twice daily, and the bathouse, shvitz, or mikveh, where the men and women gossiped, bathed, and bonded. Considering that the synagogue was separated by sex, as, naturally, was the bathhouse, the delicatessen was the one spot where community socialized as one. It was open to everyone from the pious to the sinners, the machers and pishers, criminals and politicians.

In communities like Boston’s Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods, delis like the G&G Delicatessen were de-facto community halls. It’s where people went to plead to those in power, where the humble and the exalted could meet equally over a bowl of soup. The Irish had their pubs and the Italians their cafes. We had our delis.

Somewhere in the past decades of post-war evolution and assimilation, the deli lost its place as a locus of the community where it was based. First, communities moved, and quickly. Some happened because of the housing opportunities in the suburbs. Others because of white flight, and the deterioration of American inner-cities.

People went from living within shouting distance of each other (“Heloooo Mrs. Goldberg”) to having miles of property separating them from their neighbors. While once dozens of small delis served neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Flatbush or Chicago’s Maxwell St. Market, now one or two giant delis could cover forty square miles of suburban residents. Supermarkets edged out Jewish delis for prepared foods and lunch meats. People grew afraid because of diet trends: first fat, then cards, now salt. Sushi came and captured the mouths of young and old.

When was the last time you ate at a deli? I’m guessing it was a while ago.

Yet in smaller Jewish communities around America and the Ashkenazi Diaspora, the Jewish deli holds on to its role as an important institution. Take the case of Deli on the Go, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Here’s a community with less than three thousand Jewish souls, wedged between the snowy Wasatch mountains and the barren salt flats, in Mecca for Mormons. Hardly prime deli country. Yet Israel and Miriam Lefler felt it was their duty to make sure any Jew, whether a local or a tourist, has a kosher option in Utah.

So they converted the living room of their bungalow into a small restaurant kitchen. Israel (who works by day in defense technology), and Miriarm will bake challahs and make soups for any party that needs it; from a kosher family skiing in Park City, to a 300 person kosher wedding in a local hotel. Because of their distance from larger Jewish communities, much of their food is trucked in frozen, but what they make is done with love.

Same goes for the Kosher Cajun NY Deli and Grocery, just outside New Orleans, LA. When Joel and Natalie Brown opened in the 1990’s, they did so to provide kosher food for communities around the gulf coast, who often had to drive hours just to go grocery shopping in larger cities. Kosher Cajun mixed a grocery store with restaurant, serving classics like pastrami and cholent, along with kosher Cajun classics, like gumbo and jambalaya.

When Katrina hit, the Browns fled to Memphis. Joel returned a week later to find his store completely flooded, the rancid smell of rotting food filling the air. He could have collected an insurance check and kept the family in Memphis, but his allegiance to the community was a priority. The Browns rebuilt, and within three months Kosher Cajun was back up and running, serving everyone from locals to FEMA workers.

People ask, “What makes a deli any different from a diner or a pizza place?” The answer is community. When your son is born, will the sushi place cater the bris, or will the Jewish deli? When your grandmother dies, where will the dinners at the shiva come from? Red Lobster? A Thai place? No, it’ll be deli….the one place that feeds Jews from birth till death.

The post Where Deli is Community appeared first on Jewcy.

It occurred as I drove between Kansas City and Denver in the middle of February, 2007. I wanted to sample fast food’s take on Jewish deli and so I’d pulled over for lunch at an Arby’s and ordered their version of a Reuben sandwich. On the menu picture, it looked to be the most perfect Reuben ever…thick slices of swirly marble rye, moist pink meat folded gently like fine satin drapes, a corner of Swiss poking over the edge with its telltale holes, a little garnish of sauerkraut and a few droplets of Russian dressing. Peeling back the paper wrapper, I saw an entirely different sandwich. The intricately layered folds of corned beef were in fact a squished pink mass, still sizzling from a nuking in the microwave. My crisp marble rye had become two slices of good old-fashioned white bread with some food dye. The sauerkraut limped sadly into the oozing mass of processed "Swiss"; a slice of white American cheese poked with decorative holes…about as Swiss as a North Korean watch. It looked small, dismal, and loveless. The only thing abundant was the Russian dressing, which oozed out of the sandwich each time I pressed down.

I raised the sad sandwich to my lips and bit in.

Nothing.

I tasted nothing.

Here’s what 308 grams of nothing tasted like; bread that was made from flour so milled, bleached, treated, and packed with preservatives for an extended shelf life that it had the texture of a foam mattress. The cheese was a saline mix of melted plastic and sugar. The sauerkraut could have been shredded newspaper. I tasted the water that had been injected into the corned beef to increase it’s yield, the pasty skin from the vacuum tumbler, and the overly salty brine that permeated it. It was corned beef only in name. I doubt it even came from a brisket. As I drove west into dark clouds, sleet turned to slush, slush to freezing rain, freezing rain into snow, until the whole of I-70 became a blinding white panorama. I saw an accident emerge from the weather and slammed on the brakes. My car slid sideways at 55 mph and then careened off the icy road. Right before I slammed into a snowbank (harmlessly), my obituary flashed before my eyes: "Jewish deli expert found dead with a digested Arby’s Reuben sandwich."

I recovered from the accident, but that sandwich haunts me to this day.

The post A Near-Death Sandwich appeared first on Jewcy.

I get asked about Jewish delis dozens of times a day from people all over the country, and the world. They ask about the best places for corned beef, or knishes, or matzo balls. They inquire about delis that they once ate at, whether in New York or Newfoundland, and whether they are still around, still tasty, still lorded over by the funny waitress with the beehive hairdo. I was recently even asked which Jewish delicatessens have gay owners (my answer: None that are out enough for me to mention).

The one question that gets me most often is the simplest. What is a Jewish Deli? The answer should be simple, but it’s not. Because a Jewish delicatessen means certain things to certain people, and other things to others. It varies by city, country, and religious orthodoxy, and what suffices as sufficient to one eater may not be to another. It’s as intricate a question as "What makes a Jew?", but without the foreskin to prove it. I first got asked this in January 2007, by a United States customs officer, at the frozen border separating Ontario from Michigan.

"Where are you headed?"

Well, I’m driving around the country for two months, researching a book.

"A book about what?"

About Jewish delicatessens.

"You mean like Italian delis?"

No, no, Jewish delis. You know, corned beef, pastrami, etc…

"Like Irish delis?"

No, Jewish.

"You sure it isn’t Irish?"

I’m sure.

"Whatever. Enjoy your stay."

Fact is, we Jews don’t have a monopoly on deli. The word "delicatessen" itself is French/German, and every culture, from the Italians to the Vietnamese, have their own place that sells sandwiches, cold cuts, and pickled things.

Those who insist on a more restricted definition of Jewish delis are inevitably the kosher crowd. By their logic, any delicatessen that is kosher (or, if they’re glatt, glatt kosher) is Jewish. Anything else is not. Which excludes the Carnegie, Langer’s, Katz’s, and most of the well-known Jewish delicatessens in America, Canada, and points elsewhere.

I agree that at one point in time, say the late 19th/early 20th century, this was the defining factor. Delis were owned by immigrants from Yiddish Eastern Europe, and kosher was the way of life for the vast majority of the community. But today, with the reality being that most Jews in America eat treyf with abandon, you can’t really hold on to this caveat. There are hundreds of excellent Jewish delis that aren’t kosher, whether they use non-kosher meat or serve pork chops, and yet they remain an important part of the delicatessen landscape. Then there’s the question of ownership. Does a Jewish deli need to be owned and operated by Jews? Do the waiters and countermen have to be Jewish? Not in my experience. Take Adelman’s Kosher Delicatessen, in Brooklyn. Its owner is Mohammed Salem, an Egyptian born Muslim with a degree in Archeology. His food is kosher, and he closes on Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover. The chopped liver he serves is incredible, as are his sweet potato knishes, and franks in a blanket. His deli is the bedrock of the community. Does the fact that Mohammed prays to Mecca, instead of Jerusalem, make his deli any less Jewish? Not in my eyes.

So what does this leave us with? Well, how about food? My definition of a Jewish delicatessen is a restaurant that specializes in serving the meat-based foods of Ashkenazi Jews. It is centered on the holy trinity of corned beef, pickled tongue, and pastrami (or Montreal smoked meat). It can also include matzo ball soup, knishes, and other delights, but, like Schwartz’s in Montreal, may not. Now there are plenty of restaurants, like diners or family friendly chains, that serve these items on their menu, but the difference with a Jewish deli is that the deli is known for these foods. It’s why you go and eat there. Not for the Caesar salad lurking in the back of the menu. For the kishke.

Still not convinced? Well, here’s my final test of a Jewish deli…smell. When you walk into a place that calls itself a Jewish Delicatessen, what does it smell like? Like sweating meats, pungent garlic, and baked rugelach? Close your eyes. Listen to the clanging dishes and the woman kvetching to the owner. Breathe it in. You know exactly where you are. You’re in a deli. A Jewish deli.

The post Funny, It Doesn’t Taste Jewish… appeared first on Jewcy.