Save the Deli Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Frontispiece

  Introduction

  NEW YORK, NU?

  Next! Behind the Counter at Katz’s Delicatessen

  From Pushcarts to $15 Sandwiches: A Nosh of New York Deli History

  Formica Philosophy: Why New York Needs Its Jewish Delicatessen

  Pastraminomics: The Dollars and Senselessness of the New York Delicatessen Business

  Death of a Deli: The 2nd Ave Deli

  USA: COAST TO COAST WITH LATKES TO BOAST

  Detroit: Motown’s Deli Blues and Michigan’s Suburban Jews

  Chicago: Can Deli Return to the Windy City?

  The Yucchuputzville Diaries Part 1: Goy West Young Man

  I Left My Kishkes in San Francisco

  Los Angeles: Hooray for Hollywood

  Las Vegas: Luck Be a Brisket Tonight

  The Yucchuputzville Diaries Part 2: Schmaltz by Southwest

  Florida: Where Deli Goes to Die

  TRAVELS IN THE DELI DIASPORA

  Montreal: A Smoked Meat Kingdom

  Toronto: Home Bittersweet Home

  London: God Save the Deli

  The Fine Art of Jewish Delicatessen in Belgium and Paris

  Krakow: Heartburn from Poland’s Tortured Past

  Deli’s 2nd Coming (Just off 3rd Ave)

  Food and Yiddish Appendix

  Listing of Delis

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Illustration Credits

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2009 by David Sax

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  First published in Canada in 2009 by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Sax, David.

  Save the deli : in search of perfect pastrami, crusty rye, and the heart of the Jewish delicatessen / David Sax.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-15-101384-5

  1. Restaurants—History. 2. Delicatessens—History. 3. Jewish cookery. I. Title.

  TX945.4.S393 2009

  647.9509—dc22 2009013743

  eISBN 978-0-547-41735-6

  v1.1115

  TO “POPPA” SAM SAX,

  AND THE DELI-LOVING FAMILY HE RAISED

  “Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.”—Milton Berle

  Introduction

  Two years before I was born, my grandfather “Poppa” Sam Sax died by way of a smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen in Montreal. Piled high with extra speck (paprika- and cayenne-dusted, twice-smoked slices of pickled fat), he devoured the ill-advised delicacy immediately on his release from the hospital, where he had been treated for angina. Undaunted, he indulged in the greasy treat, celebrating his vibrant life in the fullest way possible . . . by ending it in a blaze of mustard-soaked glory.

  But oh, the seconds before, when the steaming, spicy smoked meat melted the white fat between those rye slices, combining into a flavor explosion that no Jewish man of his generation could possibly resist. Did he feel the tightening of his chest after the first few bites? Did he chalk it up to that momentary high that comes from eating a truly great deli sandwich, when the senses are heightened and the body shuts down to savor the pleasure? Who knows? All that matters is that he died as he lived—in love with Jewish delicatessen. I never met “Poppa” Sam, but his legacy has slowly pickled my soul with a craving for salt, garlic, and secret spices. It is the continuation of a flavor-bound tradition that worships fatty sandwiches in brightly lit temples of abusive service and clanging dishware. Some bloodlines pass down intelligence, wealth, or physical strength. Not mine. My birthright was an unconditional love of deli.

  This is a book about Jewish delicatessen, about deli’s history and characters, its greatest triumphs, spectacular failures, and ultimately the very future of its existence. This book is a look deep into the world of the Jewish deli, told through the histories and experiences of those who keep it alive. It is the tale of the immigrant counterman, the no-nonsense supplier, the kvetching customer, and the fourth-generation deli owner, all of whom are balancing the tastes of tradition with the necessities of a business. It is a book about the economics of a nineteenth-century trade in the modern world and the pressures delicatessens face, financial and otherwise, that have caused many to disappear.

  Foremost, this book is about the meats one finds in a Jewish delicatessen: aromatic corned beef, peppery pastrami, braised brisket, garlicky salami, and silken tongue. But it is also about steaming bowls of chicken soup with fluffy matzo balls, and Yiddish-named dishes that start with K: knishes, kishke, kasha varnishkes, kreplach, kugel. It is about rye bread, garlic-soaked pickles, and mustard—whether yellow or brown, but always mustard, because butter and mayonnaise do not belong in this book.

  When “authentic New York” pastrami is served shrink-wrapped between stale slices of white bread in Nebraska gas stations, the longing for Jewish delicatessen—real Jewish deli—sticks in your gut like a half-digested knish. The delis that inspired this book are worthy institutions: temples of worn Formica and chipped dishware fronted by a Jewish surname in the possessive: Steinberg’s, Dale’s, Malach’s, Sax’s.

  That these places are the last of a dying breed is the sad truth driving my crusade to save the deli. Across North America, and in select cities of the Diaspora, Jewish delicatessens are disappearing faster than chicken fingers at a bar mitzvah buffet. People have been decrying deli’s demise for decades. “Mom and Pop labored long and hard in their corner deli, but they no longer prevail,” wrote Kevin Leonard in the obscure 1976 book The Dilly Deli Guide and Cookbook. Though his book was mostly a travel guide, his sense of the deli business’s perilous state was dead on: “Except for a fortunate few, many now simply endure.” Three decades later, it is telling that fewer than a dozen of all the delicatessens listed in Leonard’s book remain in business.

  In many cities delis simply no longer exist. In others, one or two holdouts are barely hanging on. Traditional products are disappearing from menus and shelves because they don’t fit into the bottom line. As have gone the Jews, so too have gone their nearby delis. So in many ways, this is a book about the Jewish experience, told via Jews’ most recognized contribution to the American table.

  But the situation is not without hope. Delis do their best against tremendous odds. Places like Katz’s Delicatessen in New York or Shapiro’s in Indianapolis are some of the oldest restaurants in North America. Jewish deli clearly has the ability to endure. But can it thrive, and how?

  I have spent the past three years searching out an answer, embarking on an obsessive quest to save the Jewish deli. I have ingested mountains of cured meats, rivers of mustard, and lakes of chicken soup in sixteen states, two provinces, and six countries. In these pages I hope to open your hearts to the same unrestrained love of Jewish delicatessen that I feel . . . and then subsequently fill those hearts with cholesterol. So head over to your favorite Jewish deli, pick up a pound of pastrami, another of corned beef, a loaf of rye, some full sour pickles, a jar of mustard, and a case of Dr. Brown’s. Don’t forget the matzo ball soup. Because this is a book about Jewish food, and it would be a shame to read it on an empty stomach.

  Part One

  NEW YORK, NU?

  New York is the de facto world capital of Jewish delicatessen.
Amid its canyons of skyscrapers and endless stretch of satellite cities and suburbs, one finds more Jewish delicatessens than anywhere else on earth. The delicatessen as we know it today is every bit as much a product of New York as it is of Yiddish European culture. The sights, sounds, and tastes that tell us we are inside a Jewish delicatessen were all formed over the past century and a half as the delicatessen emerged and evolved in New York City. And yet, just as New York City was the place where our concept of the Jewish deli came into being, so it is in New York where the deli is facing its greatest challenge. Make no mistake. What happens in New York will affect delis the world over.

  Next! Behind the Counter at Katz’s Delicatessen

  8:14 P.M.: Basic Training

  Charlie held out a white kitchen apron and a brand-new red Katz’s Delicatessen baseball hat. I tied the apron on and slipped the hat onto my head.

  “Okay,” Charlie said, “follow me.”

  We walked two-thirds of the way down Katz’s massive counter, squeezing into a narrow opening. Charlie called one of the countermen over.

  “Yo John,” Charlie said. “This is David. He’s going to start cutting tonight.” John nodded and looked at me with more than a hint of suspicion. “Just show him how it’s done, okay?” John okayed in approval. Charlie looked at me, smiled, and sang the words “Good luck.”

  John had no time to waste. “Yo man, here’s what you do.” He swung his body around 180 degrees, grabbing the hot handle of the steam box. Big as an office desk, the array of large metal steam boxes are the final home for Katz’s pastrami and corned beef. As John opened one of the lids, a blast of steam shot out, blanketing our bodies in the perfume of garlic, salt, and sweating meat that had been seasoning countermen here for generations. He pulled his head back for a second. Then he dove in.

  Using a two-pronged carving fork, John sorted through a hot treasure chest of meat, stabbing and flipping until he found a pastrami that caught his eye. After he hauled out the meat, John and I stepped back to the wooden cutting board. Repositioning the pastrami so the leaner tip pointed to his right and the fatter end was directly in front of his belly, John raised his fork and sunk it about two and a half inches from the tip. “Okay man, watch carefully,” he said. “You wanna hold your knife on an angle, and use the fork to help control it.” Resting the back of the knife’s edge against the fork on a 45-degree angle, he drew back his arm and sskt-sskt-sskt-sskt-sskt-sskt-sskt perfect slices of pastrami rhythmically came away.

  John now raised the knife and THWACK came down, splitting the ribbons of pastrami into two even piles. He then delicately slid the blade underneath one half of the meat and lifted it neatly on top of the other half. Grabbing two slices of rye from beneath the counter, John took a wooden spoon out of a bucket of spicy brown mustard and painted the bread. He placed the meat on the rye and closed it, cutting the sandwich in half. He once again slipped the knife beneath and lifted the whole thing onto a waiting plate. John pulled the blade back and voilà, the sandwich rested there perfectly.

  Next, we squeezed by other cutters and grabbed three pickles from two buckets. John lined them up side by side, held them in place with his hand, and with three quick slashes he sliced the pickles in half, tossing them onto another plate. “That’s it, man. You got it?” I nodded. John stepped out of the way, raised his hand, and flicked a “come here” wave to the crowd, shouting “Next!” Within seconds customers started to line up in front of me, yelling orders.

  “Katz’s has to exist because if it didn’t no one else would have any standard by which to be judged.”

  Having co-owned Katz’s Delicatessen since 1988, Fred Austin seemed to be a tailor-made figurehead for the bad-ass deli. Goateed and bald, he stood well over six feet tall and boasted a substantial girth, which, given his image in the yellowing photos, had been steadily compounding over the years. “You can tell how long a person’s worked here by how much weight he’s put on,” Austin once joked to a reporter. He was raised in the Lower East Side of the 1950s and 60s, and deli was tied into the very fabric of his life. “There were delicatessens literally on every block,” Austin said, including two (Brother’s and Henry’s) on the very same stretch of Houston Street as Katz’s. “You couldn’t walk a block without tripping over one. Now, we’re the only one left.”

  It is sadly fitting that the last original Jewish delicatessen on the Lower East Side also happens to be the oldest, not only in New York, but worldwide. The business was established in 1888 by the Lustig family, who sold to the German-born Eisland brothers in 1902, at a site directly across Ludlow. They were bought out in 1916 by Benny and Harry Katz (also German), who changed the name to Katz’s and moved the deli across the street. In 1950, the Katz brothers doubled the deli in size, moving the entrance to the current location at the corner of Houston and Ludlow.

  Over two decades ago, Fred Austin’s brother-in-law, Alan Dell, told him that Katz’s Delicatessen was for sale. Katz’s had been on the market for a number of years, and Austin and Dell, businessmen with no deli experience, scooped it up from the Katz family. “I remember this huge feeling of nostalgia came over me when I walked in the door the first time and nothing had changed,” Austin said. Their honeymoon was brief.

  “It was rough going,” Austin recalled. “There used to be crack addicts hanging out on the median strip on Houston Street. . . . New York was a deadly place for a long time. It was prominently highlighted as an example of a city that was going to be abandoned in twenty years.” Austin and Dell reduced their salaries, shortened business hours, refinanced the mortgage, and cut back on staff. Katz’s just squeezed by until the 1990s, when momentum shifted. “Ever since then things have been good,” Austin said. “The city has rebounded with a joy and a vengeance that no one had expected.”

  The Lower East Side is now one of the most dynamic areas of Manhattan. Where tenements and warehouses once stood, condos rise in their place. Where salamis and pickles were once sold from pushcarts, today they can be bought at the nearby Whole Foods. Fashion boutiques are quickly replacing shops hawking schmattes, while butchers have been converted into clubs and bars. The junkies are long gone and tourism has now become the base of Katz’s clientele. During the week, Austin estimates, half the deli’s sandwiches are sold to tourists. On the weekend, that number jumps to 75 per cent. To cater to them, Austin and Dell have expanded the menu, adding cooked items such as blintzes, soups, and even Philly cheese steaks. Where people once stayed away from the deli after dark, Katz’s recently expanded its weekend hours to 3 a.m., to accommodate the after-bar crowds. Late night was becoming as important as the lunch rush.

  “You have to come in at night,” Austin told me.

  I asked him if I would be able to go behind the counter and interview the cutters.

  “You can cut sandwiches if you want to.”

  Was he serious? How could I possibly pass this up?

  “Show up this Saturday around five o’clock. We’ll put you to work,” Austin said, adding, “Just don’t lose any fingers,” without even the hint of a smile.

  8:20 The First Slice Is the Sweetest

  “Are you open?” asked a man in rumpled sports jacket.

  I stared past him blankly.

  “Hey, umm, can I, like, get a sandwich?” he asked again.

  Wait. Did they seriously expect me to step up and start making sandwiches?

  “Uhhh, yeah, sure, what’ll ya have?” I asked.

  “Gimme a pastrami on rye.”

  Easy enough. I wheeled around to retrieve a pastrami from the steam box and stepped right into the path of one of the other cutters, nearly smacking my face into a scalding hunk of corned beef hanging off his sharp fork. “Cuidado!” he snarled in Spanish. The steam blinded me momentarily, clearing to reveal twenty pastramis piled in a shallow pool of bubbling black water. I stabbed and flipped a few, but couldn’t really discern any difference. I picked up a random hunk, turned back to the counter, and ceremoniously slapped the meat down
onto the worn wood. Let’s see, what did John do?

  First, leaner tip to the right and sink your fork in. Good.

  Knife on an angle against the fork. Good.

  The knife was sharp and the meat cut easily.

  “Yo man! Yo yo yo! Whatchu doin’???”

  I looked up to my right to see one of the busboys, the youngest staff behind the counter, running over as if I were carving up his cat. “Man, first you gotta give the guy a taste,” he said. The customer looked a little puzzled but eagerly plopped the meat in his mouth and promptly deposited a rolled-up bill into the tip cup. The busboy handed me back the knife and I resumed cutting, instantly bringing out another cry of “No, no, no, no, man, look!” He took the knife and cut gracefully, his slices falling more evenly than mine and also thinner. He handed me back the knife and, with the look of a disappointed teacher, went back to hauling plates. I could understand why. Busboys weren’t even allowed to touch knives; they had to earn their way up to the cutting board via the broom, and here was some fool who walked in off the street and started butchering sandwiches.

  I cut the slices in half, piled them up, grabbed the bread, slathered the rye with mustard, slid the meat onto the bread, and closed the sandwich. Not bad. Then I went to cut the sandwich and my hand went through the bread. The cutting board was now a mess of pastrami slices, torn rye, and mustard. Shit. I grabbed more bread and tried to reconstruct the sandwich as best I could. What emerged was neither pretty nor proper, though it was entirely edible, which I assured the customer with a knowing smile.

  “Pickles?” he asked.

  Squeezing the pickles between my fingers, as John had shown me, I rapidly drew the knife across each, taking out a chunk of cumbersome rubber glove in the process, though, thankfully, no fingers. I handed over the pickles and sighed with relief.