by David Sax
As early as the late 1950s, Jewish families began moving to the northwestern suburbs, first to Oak Park, then Southfield and West Bloomfield. Though the desire for bigger homes was a factor, so too was a growing fear that black communities were encroaching. The race riots that engulfed the city in July 1967 sealed Detroit’s fate, and urban delis felt the shock as the remaining Jews fled the city en masse. “As the white flight/Jewish flight moved in a northwesterly direction,” Ginsberg said, “obviously there was no business left for the delis. They either moved in that direction or closed up. Everybody fled Detroit. [Whole neighborhoods] picked up and left. Suddenly, my neighborhood went from being four square miles to forty square miles.”
Seeing Detroit’s Jewish community dying, Ginsberg wisely left Mr. Deli, later opening the Pickle Barrel in suburban Southfield, which he ran along with a partner, from 1975 to 1980, until he burned out. He then sold Chicago’s Vienna Beef and Best Kosher deli meats around the Midwest. By 1982, Ginsberg was ready to strike out on his own and opened up United Meat and Deli in an old Detroit meatpacking plant. Perfecting his secret recipe over the course of eight months, Motown’s corned beef maven was born.
Sy Ginsberg led me from his office through a curtain of heavy plastic into a brightly lit room. Nodding to the hard-hatted workers, each with a sizable knife in one hand and a sharp metal hook in the other, Sy took me to the edge of a tall plastic bin piled high with briskets. Cut from the breast of cattle and shaped like a flat teardrop, briskets are blanketed on the top by a layer of inch-thick fat called the deckle. When cured, cooked, and then steamed, all that fat makes for a moist, succulent sandwich.
Sy Ginsberg prides himself on the cure for his corned beef. After all, it is the core of his business. Catering to the Midwest market, which heavily favors corned beef over pastrami, he considers his product far superior to New York’s, which he calls “flavorless.” Traditionally, corned beef cures in barrels, much like pickles, over a period of time with a mixture of salt, garlic, sugar, and spices. As the briskets sit in the mixture, they soak up the brine and are ready to cook within a week or two. Several delicatessens still make their own product this way, though most buy a pre-pickled product like Sy Ginsberg’s corned beef, which receives its cure via a flavor injector machine.
The Danish-built Fomaco M3 injector looks like an airport X-ray machine. Meat is fed into one end of the machine, until it reaches the center, where forty-eight needles rapidly plunge into the meat and inject the brisket with the desired amount of brine. Ginsberg’s brine contains a small percentage of nitrates, which he uses to control bacteria, increase shelf life, and improve color. The M3 has the capability to inject up to 650 liters a minute, and when firing, the sound (ch-PSST-ch-PSST-ch-PSST) is nearly deafening.
“Everybody used to pickle their own corned beef,” Ginsberg said, when I asked him why this wasn’t more common, “but with barrels, curing corned beef through osmosis took weeks.” By comparison, the meat we saw would be ready within twenty-four hours.
Most Jewish delicatessens buy uncooked corned beef from United Meat and Deli. Cooking on site allowed delis to customize their product, adding more spices to the water, boiling longer or shorter depending on the size and toughness of the corned beef. But fast-food outlets, supermarkets, and restaurant chains want something ready to serve the second it arrives. Ginsberg took me to the next room, where “idiot proofing” came into play . . . precooking. Hauling up the heavy lid on what resembled a giant metal coffin, Ginsberg took a big plastic paddle and stirred a few dozen corned beefs in individual plastic bags dancing atop what appeared to be boiling water. “Actually, the water isn’t boiling, the bubbles are just aerating the corned beef, and making sure it cooks evenly and doesn’t stick to the bag.” Once the meat is cooled, a starting cut is made, so that when it arrives at the restaurant, people know which way to slice it.
We shed our coats and hairnets and went back to sit in Ginsberg’s office. These days, United Meat and Deli is a medium-sized player in the non-kosher Midwestern delicatessen trade. The Detroit plant has 40 employees and ships 150,000 pounds of meat weekly, most of that being raw, cured corned beef—what Sy called his “bread and butter.” Like Eddie Weinberg at Empire National in Brooklyn has found, the decline of Jewish delicatessens has affected just who Ginsberg’s market is. “If I could quantify it,” he estimated, “I’d say there are 60 per cent less delis [since the 1980s]. We’re selling more and more product, but it’s not necessarily going to the delis. In New York they’re called diners, here we call them Coney Island restaurants, but they’re just neighborhood restaurants. Even these chain conglomerates, these TGI Fridays, and Bennigan’s, and Max and Erma’s, they all have a corned beef sandwich on their menu.”
These customers buy corned beef the same way McDonald’s buys hamburgers—squarely focused on the bottom line. Most will buy extra-lean corned beef, or pastrami made not from the traditional navel, but from lean cuts generally used for roast beef. Some competitors will pump the meat full of excess chemicals, brine, and water, so it weighs more. Others use lesser quality beef, substituting steer meat or cow meat, resulting in a product that is dry and tough. Artificial flavors mask the difference.
“That’s what we’re up against on a daily basis,” Ginsberg said. “We have customers who have some cognizance of quality and flavor, and they are willing to accept the fact that you build a business, and maintain a business, serving a quality and consistent product. But there are a lot of people that are only looking at one thing: ‘How much does this cost per pound?’”
When a new delicatessen opens and contacts Sy Ginsberg for product, he will always offer to help the deli’s owners start up. He’ll demonstrate the way to cook a corned beef so that none of the flavor seeps out. He will don an apron, stand behind the counter, and show people how to properly trim the briskets. He will build sandwiches. He may even mop the floor. Sy Ginsberg does all this absolutely free of charge.
“When people come to me and say they want to get into the deli business, I always hesitate until I hear their background,” Ginsberg remarked. “If they don’t have a deli background, I shudder. In my opinion, the deli is the most difficult type of any food service establishment to run.” He could just as easily ship the product with a book of instructions, but the man’s passion for deli is limitless. Ginsberg has helped open delis around Michigan, Ohio, and even far-flung locales like Bozeman, Montana. In the long run, it makes for great business. One of Ginsberg’s first consulting jobs was with Zingerman’s in nearby Ann Arbor, where he taught Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig everything he knew about deli. Today Zingerman’s is one of the most successful delicatessens in the country, and they remain loyal customers of Ginsberg’s corned beef.
Our bellies were emitting low murmurs, so we decided to head for lunch. Before we went, I asked Ginsberg if it would be possible to have a quick look at Lou’s, the last original Jewish deli still in the city of Detroit. “Gosh, I haven’t been there in years,” he said, “but it’s not too far out of the way. Follow my car and just make sure to stay real close. You don’t want to get lost over there.” We drove through a city that had been left to fend for itself. I had been to poor areas in other countries before, including slums in places like Rio de Janeiro, but the sheer scope of Detroit’s blight—block after block of abandoned structures, gated liquor stores, and ramshackle Baptist churches—shocked me. Here I was, an afternoon’s drive from Toronto, and it looked like a war zone.
“Wow,” Ginsberg said, upon walking in the doors of Lou’s deli, where he first worked half a century ago, “I don’t even recognize the place.” The counter, kitchen, and cash now sat squarely behind a wall of bulletproof Plexiglas, stretching all the way to the ceiling. The customer placed an order through a microphone, then slid their money under the glass. Food was served from a bulletproof lazy Susan in the glass. Ginsberg beckoned me to come and look at a lone photo adorning the wall. A faded Deli Man in Kodachrome stared back at us. “This was
the old man,” he said wistfully. “That was Lou.” Lou Loewy’s gray hair was parted neatly, his eyes hidden behind thick Coke-bottle glasses. Lou had his hands squarely on his hips, and the wry smile seemed to say, “Nu? Take the picture already, I got a deli to run here.”
I wondered what Lou would have said had he lived to see his kitchen shielded like an Israeli embassy. Would he have been pleased that his namesake was the last original Jewish deli standing in Detroit, one that still served classics like salami, pastrami, matzo ball soup, and knishes, even though less than 1 per cent of the city was still Jewish? Or would he toss in his grave at Felicia’s Chutzpah, a triple-decker sandwich of ham, pineapple, cream cheese, lettuce, and tomato?
“They are capitalizing on the New Soul Food,” Ginsberg remarked after we sat down at the counter of the Bread Basket Deli in nearby Livonia, a middle-class suburb ringed by auto parts factories. All around me guys in baseball caps, work boots, and union jackets were hunched over big sandwiches. Everyone had a mustache. “I’d say that more corned beef is consumed by African Americans in Detroit than Jews for sure. No question about it.” The Bread Basket was part of a small chain, owned by Alex Winkler, Sy’s former partner at the Pickle Barrel, and one of his fastest-growing customers. In addition to the Livonia location, there were three recently opened Bread Baskets in the inner city, complete with the same bulletproof setup as Lou’s.
“In the Jewish community people think delis are a Jewish thing,” Ginsberg said, “but a lot of ethnic groups like deli, especially blacks. Alex has tapped into a market that everyone else forgot about. I have lost a lot of business in Jewish areas, but I gained it back and more so [in the inner city].” The key to this was what Ginsberg called the KISS principal, an acronym that stood for Keep It Simple Stupid. Rather than offer a full range of Jewish delicatessen items that required skilled labor, an informed clientele, and lots of kitchen space, pared-down delis like the Bread Basket or Lou’s could operate in downtown Detroit by offering the basics: sandwiches and soups. No flanken, no kasha varnishkes, no gefilte fish. Simple, cheap, and not altogether stupid.
Our sandwiches emerged in front of us: two fat masterpieces of Sy Ginsberg’s thinly sliced corned beef wedged between thick slices of double-baked rye. As my teeth sunk into the pillowy bread with its crisp crust, I quickly realized why Sy’s corned beef was famous. Pink as a rare Sunday roast, it was so moist and tender that my jaw was actually surprised at the ease of chewing. The flavor was perfect, a balanced and somewhat sweet accent on the brisket, with just the faintest notes of mellow salt and garlic—the cure highlighted the meat like a fine fragrance on a beautiful woman.
The next morning I might as well have exited the freeway onto a different continent. The parking lot of the mall housing the Stage Deli in West Bloomfield was like a Lexus dealership. As I waited to be seated, a group of women in their sixties were departing from breakfast. They were clad along the lines of high school girls: skintight denim with colorful butt patches, fur-collared bomber jackets pressing forth silicone cleavage, Gucci sunglasses the size of ski goggles, and chinchilla boots with dangling pendants. They air-kissed goodbye, lest their taut, puffy lips explode upon contact. Overnight I had gone from one of the poorest neighborhoods in America to one of its wealthiest. This was how Detroit’s other half fressed.
Since it opened in 1962, the Stage Deli (officially called Stage and Company) had always been grand. Its founders, an experienced army cook and Detroit counterman called Jack Goldberg, and his wife, Harriet, had the idea to open an upscale Jewish delicatessen. Jack’s son Steve Goldberg now ran the Stage Deli. If the Bread Basket adhered to the KISS principle, then the Stage epitomized the grand suburban delis that emerged in America’s postwar era. With its low ceiling, accented lighting, plush carpet, and deep vinyl booths, the Stage felt like the ultimate Jewish rec room.
A menu of five oversized pages offered up every imaginable treat. Sandwiches dominated, and between combinations the Stage Deli boasted some four dozen offerings named after Broadway shows or movies, most served on Jack Goldberg’s famous double-baked rye, a Detroit specialty. The rye in New York generally comes pre-sliced, in small disks about half an inch thick. The best deli ryes have a crisp, amber-colored crust and soft center, though these are increasingly difficult to find, especially in New York, where rye has declined along with the deli. Back when he started, Jack Goldberg pioneered the process of double-baking his rye breads. In essence, the ryes at the Stage, and elsewhere in Detroit, are baked until almost ready, cooled, and then finished off again in a hot oven shortly before slicing. The warm loaf is cut into inch-thick slices on a diagonal. When you bite into a slice of double-baked rye, the difference in taste and texture is astounding. A thick, rustic crust greets your teeth, recalling the pleasurable chewiness of sourdough. The warm center of a double-baked rye has an airier density about it and doesn’t break apart when stressed with a Bye-Bye-Birdie (house-roasted turkey breast, chopped liver, and Russian dressing). It makes New York’s rye taste like pigeon food.
In addition to this, the Stage offered close to twenty appetizers ranging from the traditional (kishka and gravy) to the modern (spicy chicken quesadilla) to somewhere in between (french-fried chicken livers with sautéed onions and honey mustard dipping sauce). There were dozens of soups, salads, burgers, steaks, smoked fish plates, chicken dishes, and pastas, not to mention a separate breakfast menu. The huge takeout section was stocked with every imaginable item. But for the Stage to keep its regulars, Goldberg had to give them ever more. “In order to be successful in the marketplace, you have to offer a variety,” Goldberg said. “The days of solid Jewish ownership of hole-in-the-wall delis is done. Look at any of the new delis created in the past decade or two and they’re all big operations. That’s what it takes in order to survive. [The Stage Deli] is an anachronism over here for forty-five years,” Goldberg said. “In this country, [restaurants] either shutter or take the next step to move nationwide.”
Across the country, delicatessens in strip malls and shopping centers emulated the Stage’s example, offering bigger, glitzier versions of delis with menus as thick as phone books. Was this what it took for Jewish delicatessens to survive in suburban America? In the land where Hummers and Dodge Rams were proving the ruination of Motor City’s automakers, was bigger definitely better? And where did it leave the few smaller, old-school places, like the nearby Star Delicatessen, whose European-born owner Sid Neuman operated from a small deli counter on a takeout-only basis? As I drove past the chain restaurants that would become an everyday sight over the following two months, I wondered whether there was a place in America’s suburban sprawl for something that wasn’t new or shiny or different.
“Look honey, I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but if you want to talk I got no time to waste so you can come back in the kitchen because I’m freakin’ meshugah this morning, you got it honey?”
Though close to eighty years old, Rose Guttman contained the energy of a woman half her age. In the blink of an eye, she could pull a scalding baking tray of heavy pound cake from the oven, open the walk-in fridge, stand on a crate and pull down another tray of cake, juggle the two in her strong arms, toss the hot one on the top rack, shut the steel door with her foot, slice the pan into perfectly even squares, wrap each one, scrape up the scraps and find a home for them in my mouth by waving a knife and slice of cake in my face, saying, “Here, eat! C’mon, honey, I don’t have all day!”
Born in Romania, Rose Guttman was raised in her family’s restaurant until the Nazis invaded. She ended up in Auschwitz, lost her entire family, but survived, and eventually settled in Detroit. Her husband, Irving Guttman, opened a delicatessen. Irving’s Deli became the most successful deli chain in Detroit history. By the time the last one was sold in 1987, they had opened eleven outlets in total. “People lined up outdoors from eleven in the morning until nine at night,” Rose said, grabbing a tub of corned beef scraps. “Everything was fresh in my store, not
hing was canned. The other delis, they cheated. Well, you don’t cheat the public, honey, you cheat yourself.”
Rose was now a widow. At dawn each day (except Saturday), she could be found in the small kitchen at Tony’s Ember’s Deli and Restaurant, a roadside diner in the suburb of Orchard Lake that had previously been a Jewish deli and was now owned by Tony Perkovic, an immigrant from Montenegro. Tony brought Rose into his kitchen in September 2005 to revive the Jewish flavor, which had faded considerably.
“I just wanted to give the menu a boost. Meet customer demands for Jewish food . . . old-fashioned Jewish food,” Tony said, in his thick accent. Rose had brought back knishes, noodle kugel, and other Yiddish dishes, which had increased business. She was a fair-haired firebrand octogenarian, with a voice that filled the room in no-nonsense turns of phrase. Tony was softer spoken, half her age, and towered a solid two feet above Rose’s head. After years sitting at home lonely and miserable, Rose needed to cook.
“I’m not a talker! I don’t care about what’s happening in other people’s lives and I’m not a luncher,” she said, waving a knife for emphasis. “I don’t need the money, honey, okay? This is something to keep myself going. It gives me a reason to get out of bed.” She took softball-sized matzo balls from a pot and plunked them into a roasting pan, then skimmed the stock and poured it into a container. Between asking the time and replying with a frantic “Oy oy oy oy oy” every few minutes, she set to task prepping corned beef hash. “If it kills me, I gotta make it!” she said, tossing the corned beef scraps in a blender with some onions. “I can’t teach the others how to make it. They just can’t do it, they screw it up, make it all into mush. The more you teach, the less they know.”