Save the Deli

by David Sax

  A decade ago, this was the central question that propelled Robby Morgenstein to forge a new deli beachhead in San Francisco. Like the great California icon at the time, Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, the moment came when Morgenstein was in the midst of his bowling tournament. The Long Island-born Deadhead was looking for a mid-game nosh. Venturing down Filmore Street, he spied potential in a sign that boasted Coney Island Hot Dogs. When he beheld limp franks floating in greasy water, Morgenstein turned enraged to his friend and declared, “That’s it, we’re doing it!”

  Morgenstein’s family had a long history in Baltimore’s kosher catering trade, but he was largely a novice. Days before Robby opened Miller’s East Coast Delicatessen, his mother, Rae (who was seriously ill at the time), flew out to help. “She can barely walk, she’s got pneumonia, and as soon as we open the restaurant she went back and got spinal surgery,” he recalled. “And she sits here, you know—and this is the last viable thing she does as an adult—she sits here with me and we make everything. She can’t walk, so she sits on a stool in the back, there’s two amigos helping her get stuff, and she just tastes and seasons, tastes and seasons, until I get everything right.”

  Morgenstein endeavored to make as much from scratch as possible, and it showed. My San Francisco guide, music producer David Katznelson, devoured bite after bite of towering Reuben and Rachel sandwiches, plus a helping of sweet chopped chicken liver on a fat bed of sliced red onions. All of it was served in the atmosphere Morgenstein created, which can be described as Grateful Deli. An aura of hot meat hung in the air. He was proud his deli had some “schmutz on it.” But elsewhere were touches that gave it a real West Coast feel: the wall of dog photographs from loyal customers, the Dead shows playing softly in the background, dreadlocked babies crawling around.

  Morgenstein certainly looked the part of the West Coast slacker, but his visage (a sort of pudgy Tom Hanks), and paunch (his cholesterol was a whopping 638. . . he called himself a “walking pastrami”) hinted at a deli vet. The mix even filtered down to the customers, who included a few hippies, but also Herb Hirsch, an elderly Chicago retiree who came in daily to eat his franks, beans, challah toast, and potato salad. “It’d be a shame if there wasn’t a place like this in town,” Mr. Hirsch said with a broad smile.

  “It’s more important to me that Herb be happy than a bunch of frat boys getting drunk and coming in for Philly cheese steaks,” Morgenstein told me. When he opened, the menu varied between traditional foods and “Californian-style” dishes, because that’s what his co-investors thought would really sell. But the wraps and salads really pissed Morgenstein off. “Why let a hundred-something-year tradition in this country go away?” he asked. He’d recently revamped and expanded the menu, making it “uber-Jewy,” by adding truly rare Jewish items like kishke, egg bean and barley, kasha varnishkes, tongue polonaise, cold borscht, matzo brie, smoked sturgeon, and pickled herring. “I can’t say it’s a business decision,” Morgenstein said. “It’s what I want to cook.” He was bold, a bit brash, and ready to do anything to save deli in San Francisco. This made him an ideal Deli Man, though in this city, he was hardly a pioneer. It turned out that Robby Morgenstein wasn’t the first deli lover who had tried to save the deli in San Francisco.

  Over half a century ago, David Apfelbaum was looking to eat at a deli in the theater district with his wife, Nusia. First he went to Drapkin’s, but it was dirty and smelled awful, so they tried a second delicatessen . . . this looked worse. By the end of the night, David Apfelbaum had dragged Nusia to a dozen Jewish delicatessens around San Francisco. Finally he gave up, exhausted, but not before turning to his wife and stating his intention to open a deli. Apfelbaum secured a tiny storefront on Geary, in the heart of the theater district, and set about construction. Passersby tried to warn David off. “People said so many delis had closed before they opened,” he said, “it was suicide.”

  Sound familiar?

  David Apfelbaum wasn’t easily deterred. Born in Lodz, Poland, he was the only family member to survive Auschwitz. David possessed the character traits typical of the survivor-generation immigrant—fearlessness, imagination, and an unshakable work ethic. Firmly grasping the potential of the American dream, he quickly succeeded in making David’s Delicatessen a San Francisco institution. David’s secret, like those reviving San Francisco’s delicatessens today, was his focus on quality and freshness at a time when the competition was cutting costs and putting out an inferior product.

  David’s soon became home to San Francisco’s theater crowd, journalists, sports figures, and intellectuals. David’s quickly grew into a lavish cafeteria, with a large, U-shaped counter, and ornate banquet rooms. Apfelbaum began opening other locations, sixteen in all, and by 1965 David’s dominated the city’s deli scene. It was one of the most successful delicatessens in the country, known coast to coast.

  Then it all fell apart.

  “A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht,” Apfelbaum uttered to me in Yiddish, when recalling how the bank lost millions of dollars of his money at the peak of David’s success. Man plans and God laughs. As reporters hounded Apfelbaum, he just smiled. “Any idiot can see daylight when compared to light,” he told the cameras. “If I compare what happened today with what happened to my life between 1939 and 1945, it’s nothing. No one will hang me, gas me, or torture me. I’ll go home tonight, eat a good meal, sleep in a comfortable bed, and on Monday I’ll figure it out.”

  Eventually, all the different David’s Delis were sold and closed, until the original location on Geary was all that remained of this once proud deli empire. By the time I visited, the glory had clearly faded. The place was a drafty, rundown enterprise in a neighborhood that had lost its glamour decades back. The prices were exorbitant by any standards; a Reuben sandwich cost $18.95, soup cost $8, coleslaw $5. I ordered a plate of sauerbraten, a brisket in sweet gravy, and couldn’t believe that it came with frozen vegetables straight from a bag. “Maybe we should go,” my friend David Katznelson suggested. “This place is well past its prime.” I considered leaving, but something compelled me to stay. My whole journey had been about preserving delicatessens, the older the better, and deep inside me burned a glimmer of hope for David’s.

  Then the blintz arrived that changed it all. It resembled a Parisian crepe: all flat, thin, and bubbled crisp along every inch of surface. It was smothered in a dark, sugary blueberry sauce and two generous dollops of sour cream. Breaking off bites with our forks, Katznelson and I inhaled our first mouthfuls in silence, gazing at each other in stunned wonder as we chewed on the crackling dough mixing with the sweet, creamy flavors. It was simply the best blintz I’d ever had.

  Sitting back, scraping the plates for whatever was left, I took another look and started seeing David’s Deli in a different light. There were the giant pastries lying in the display case—fat macaroons, massive rugelach, chocolate babka to die for, almond drops, mocha bee hives, rum balls, cherry strudel—in total some eighty-five varieties of baked goods. I ran my hands over the studs on the vinyl stools. I looked at the sandwich menu written out on a glazed wood panel in individual raised brass letters that hadn’t changed in fifty-five years, and I saw a deli that was down, but not out.

  With one hand on his cane and the other grasping the counter, David Apfelbaum shuffled over to us. The wild strands of white hair jutting out from the side of head gave him the appearance of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. He spoke slowly, but his words were filled with razor-sharp wit. His most recent publication was a pamphlet titled Some Hows and Whys of the Traditions and History of Jewish Cooking, which he handed out to clients. Rather than the usual shtick-filled Yiddish clichés on deli foods, it was a philosophical and religious treatise on Jewish food. Here’s just a sample:

  When my mother made spaghetti, it was smothered, bored to death, in the blandest sauce imaginable. This, the entire family understood, was spite work. The “inferiority” of such alien dishes became for her a self-fulfilling prophecy. The t
heory was this: One starts liking spaghetti and anything can happen. It’s only a matter of time before you’re on to chow mein or pizza. After all, a mother’s job is to prevent her family’s imperceptible drift into dissipation. . . . Spaghetti functioned to remind us just how good Pirogen could be.

  On it went for nineteen pages, touching on everything from the origin of knishes to a Talmudic analysis of the biblical kosher laws. The menu, too, was packed with David’s verse:

  Chicken Liver with Schmaltz: Eggs, onion, salt and pepper have been chopped in with the liver for as long as anyone can remember. The recipe is so unalterably classic, only a culinary Philistine would dare violate its venerable timelessness. The livers are chopped 1179 times. Some people consider this a rather arbitrary number. Who knows? It could be that David somehow believes this precise method adds something somehow. Then again it could just be his lucky number. In either case, he’s the boss.

  One thousand one hundred and seventy-nine? I turned to David and asked what the meaning of the joke was. The corners of his mouth creaked up a bit as he rolled up his sleeve to reveal the faded blue 1179 tattooed on his forearm. I felt a shiver. This man had taken the Nazis’ branding and turned it into a joke on a deli menu. I thought I had a twisted sense of humor, but this would have made Lenny Bruce squirm.

  Being at the deli was one of the few pleasures remaining in David’s life. He loved seeing the sad, worn faces of people walking in the door transform as they tasted his food. But when I asked David about the future, he just turned his hands up in the air. “I would like to see it continue, but nobody will work as hard as I did,” he said. “I lived it.” His children had declined to enter the business and there was no clear successor. From what I’d heard around town, he was short tempered with staff, and his stubborn nature, which had increased with age, contributed to the further decline of his once great deli. The place existed only because he owned the building, and the property was worth a fortune.

  Over the months that followed I heard that several prominent deli owners around the country were trying to buy David’s. “David’s is one of the great forgotten delis in America,” said one. “It just needs love and care to make it great. To see it die off would be an absolute shame.”

  San Francisco’s delicatessen scene had left me with a smidgeon of hope for America’s. In a city that had forgotten deli, there was a real energy and excitement about the future that came from people like Robby Morgenstein, who were turning back the clock on the way food was made, returning Jewish deli to its flavorful roots. But I also felt a touch of remorse. David Apfelbaum had been filled with the same boundless optimism when he started David’s two generations back. He’d revived deli in San Francisco, only to see it falter anew. Now he sat patiently in his broken palace, the last emperor of a deli dynasty that I hoped could somehow outlive its namesake.

  Los Angeles: Hooray for Hollywood

  Brace yourselves, New York, because what I am about to write is definitely going to piss a lot of you off, but it needs to be said: Los Angeles has become America’s premier deli city.

  Wait . . . Stop . . . Put the gun down. It’s true.

  Across the city’s sprawling acres, there are more delicatessens of a higher quality, on average, than anywhere else in America. Every time I visited one deli, I heard about three more. Each one just kept tossing surprises my way. There were small old-school delis and large lavish chains, famous ones without famous customers, and little-known spots that were frequented by stars. There were even fast-food-type delis called pastrami dips (think a French dip with pastrami) like The Hat and Johnny’s Pastrami. Despite their healthy image, far more Angelinos than native New Yorkers eat at Jewish delicatessens on a regular basis. Though the occasional tourist swings by, Jewish delicatessens in L.A. are thriving in the present, not trading on fabled pasts.

  There has been no grand decline in the Los Angeles deli scene. Most are packed, sometimes around the clock, and not just with older Brooklynites like Larry King (who eats breakfast at Nate n’ Al daily). The delis out there are bigger, are more comfortable, and ultimately serve better food than any other city in America, including the best pastrami sandwich on earth. Los Angeles is both the exception to the rule of deli’s inevitable decline and the example for the rest of the nation of how deli can ultimately stay relevant. If we are to save the deli elsewhere, we can learn a lot from L.A.

  When California was incorporated into the Union in 1850, there were just eight Jews in Los Angeles. Because of its distance from Europe, Los Angeles never experienced the massive influx of Ashkenazi immigrants that descended upon the East Coast in the late nineteenth century. The great sea change for L.A. came in 1913, when burgeoning film director Cecil B. DeMille teamed with partners Samuel Goldwyn (who would form MGM) and Jesse Lasky (who helped create Paramount) to make a movie, The Squaw, in a suburb called Hollywood, ushering in the golden era of filmmaking.

  Many in the upper echelons of the early studio system were Jewish, forever implanting Hollywood with a disproportionate Semitic flavor that prevails to this day. As the film business grew into the postwar era, a migration west of Jewish entertainment talent swelled, lured by easy money, swimming pools, and goldenhaired shiksas. And while delicatessens back east may have occasionally served the president of a Wall Street bank, out in L.A. the studio bosses and A-list movie stars ate at the deli almost daily. The Universal studio commissary featured matzo ball soup, and the Academy Awards after-parties were catered by Nate n’ Al.

  Today, L.A.’s Jewish delicatessens are largely inseparable from the business of Hollywood, which is one of the key reasons the deli thrives in L.A. Art’s, in Studio City, built its business delivering meals to the cast and crew of shows like St. Elsewhere, Get Smart, and Gilligan’s Island. Owner Art Ginsburg credits 50 per cent of his business to the studios. He even caters the Miramax and Dreamworks private jets. When the writers’ strike hit the industry at the end of 2007, L.A.’s Jewish delis really felt the pinch.

  The link between delis and Hollywood goes deeper still. At Factor’s Deli, on Pico Boulevard, owner Suzee Markowitz calls 1:00 p.m. “agent hour,” when dozens of agents’ black Mercedes line up at the valet and their owners head inside for an intense hour of horse-trading. Nate n’ Al is the gathering spot for the upper echelons of Hollywood money and studio heads, who are rewarded with some of the finest chicken soup known to man—a wide bowl of silky broth dominated by a single, almost meaty, matzo ball—and corned beef, brisket, and short ribs made from certified Angus beef. Every year, billions of dollars of the world’s entertainment is created, negotiated, and financed at delicatessens throughout Los Angeles. It’s like the Cannes, Toronto, and Sundance film festivals all rolled into one.

  “I’ve almost never had anyone object to a meeting in a deli,” Sandy Climan told me, as we sat down to breakfast directly behind Larry King’s entourage at Nate n’ Al one morning. Climan is president of Entertainment Media Ventures, a media and investment company; was previously president of Lion’s Gate Studios; and was a member of the senior management team at powerhouse agency CAA. Bronx-born and -raised, Climan explained to me the logic as to why delicatessens became Hollywood’s watering holes.

  “I see several reasons,” he said, breaking up a chunk of smoked whitefish, which he placed on a bagel. “The creative industry is an ad hoc business. Projects are put together by people in small groups, and consequently everyone and their brother needs a conference room. The only one many people have is a deli table. In the entertainment industry, creativity is not necessarily enhanced by formality. [A deli emits] an accepted chaos in an industry where creativity comes out of organized chaos. Because genius isn’t orderly. . . . The people sitting around here are trying to figure out whether the boy falls in love with the girl or not. Delis are about real life. Entertainment is about real life.”

  L.A.’s vast sprawl allows its delis the freedom to grow into hangouts suited for Hollywood’s taste. Most delicatessens in L.A. own their p
roperties. They have parking lots and valets, and have been built to feel like a cross between diners and country clubs. Few delis exist where tables are crammed together cheek by jowl. In L.A., the banquette is king. In L.A. you can find privacy in a deli. You can even find class.

  At Greenblatt’s on Sunset Boulevard, the dark wood panels and stained-glass windows lend the place the feeling of a refined steakhouse. The deli counter shares space with Greenblatt’s high-end wine boutique, and if you want, owner Jeff Kavin will pair your brisket with a glass of Napa zinfandel or do a vertical tasting of forshpeis (appetizers) and sauvignon blancs. Many delis in L.A. offer full bar service, and, compared to other cities, the bottles actually get opened. In the rear of Factor’s on Pico Boulevard, there is a gorgeous Mediterranean-style courtyard with big wooden tables, umbrellas, plants, and a fountain. There are no salamis hanging in windows at Los Angeles delicatessens, nor are there signs advertising Hebrew National or other products. “Our delis here are very laid back,” one owner told me. “Hey, it’s California.”

  In this setting, where bare bones casual meets West Coast comfort, the magic of Hollywood happens. If there is one subset of the entertainment community that benefits the most from the creative energy of Jewish delicatessens, it is comedy writers. I wanted to find out what it was that made delis such incubators of comedic creativity, but I needed a comedian, ideally a Jewish one, with some experience. I’d dropped names around town to various deli owners, but they freely admitted that asking celebrities to be interviewed would be impossible. Then, sitting in my car, I got a call on my phone.

  “Hello, is this David?” said the raspy and highly familiar voice on the line. “This is Mel Brooks, where the heck did you get the meshugah idea for a deli book?”