Save the Deli
Page 28
Jeremy came up to us. “David, come with me outside—the lineup is down the block and I need help handing out chopped liver.” We donned coats and walked out the front door, to a crowd of thirty-odd people and growing that snaked down the street. The food disappeared in ten seconds, with elderly women in fur coats literally licking up the greasy scrapings from the parchment paper. Soon, every seat was filled. The small space between the door, the takeout counter, and the cash became packed with bodies. The slicing machines were humming, orders were being shouted, and dishes were clanging. Above it all rose a symphony of chatter, smacking lips, drained drinks, and the guttural utterances of happy customers. Once again, the 2nd Ave Deli was alive.
Then, through the throngs of people, I saw Sharon Lebewohl. When I last spoke to her she was broken-hearted and very much at odds with her uncle Jack. The closing of the original deli, plus the pain of her father’s murder, had amplified any rift they’d felt. When I contacted her weeks before, she sent me a brief reply:
“I would love to speak with you but I’m not involved with the new deli at all. I doubt that I will be there for the grand opening.”
Now she was standing in front of me, looking simply radiant, her face flushed with color. Jeremy walked up and gave her a big hug. “Thank you for coming, Sharon,” he whispered into her ear, “you have no idea what this means to me.” Jack came over and wrapped his arms around her, and once again, the Lebewohl family was whole. “It’s her father’s place,” Jeremy told me out of earshot, “and for her to be here means the world to me.”
We sat and ate, Jack, Sharon, and I. We had mushroom barley soup, made with dried shiitake mushrooms and beads of barley that held the sweet, woodsy flavor of a forest floor. Sharon thought it was actually an improvement on the original. Next came the stuffed cabbage, which had a hint of cinnamon that lingered in the mouth after the tender beef was devoured. Then I ordered something that I’d never had before: a rolled beef sandwich. Rolled beef was once a staple of New York delis. Basically butterflied navel, peppered on the outside, it is then rolled and tied with string so the slices come out in large rounds. Empire National was the only purveyor who still made rolled beef, and they sold it to a handful of old-school delicatessens on an irregular basis. Now I stared down at rounds of pink meat streaked with white tributaries of creamy fat, rimmed with the slightest hint of pepper. It was mild and rich, cool and slick, sweet and spicy.
When Jack left to help Jeremy, I asked Sharon why she’d changed her mind about coming. “I thought it over and I just woke up this morning and felt I needed to be with my family,” she said, tears of joy welling up in her eyes. “Everything that happened . . . it was nobody’s fault. When I first heard they’d be reopening, I thought it was a mistake. I thought restaurants and delis didn’t last long, and I was afraid it would hurt the name my father built. I couldn’t let go of the old. This is a great testament to my father, and if anyone was going to do great it’d be Jeremy. . . . It feels like a continuation. I feel my father’s presence, and this would have had his blessing. My father was so proud of his family. Even if he were alive, Jeremy would be doing this.”
A young busboy came over and looked at a cartoon hanging on the wall. It was from the days after Abe Lebewohl’s murder, and it showed the Deli Man ascending on a cloud to heaven. The angels looked on with glee at the food he was bringing to the Pearly Gates. The busboy’s face changed to a frown. “Awwww . . .” Sharon just smiled.
All afternoon people kept streaming in the door. At four o’clock Ariella, Jeremy’s recent bride, came in for a quick hello, while Jeremy ran around putting out fires. The deli was running out of challah bread and chicken soup, and there hadn’t been a quiet moment to mop the floors. The phone rang nonstop with orders, questions, and even people applying for jobs. Added to this, New York deli customers were doing what they do best . . . argue. A man and a woman had staked a claim on the same seat, and each was pleading their case to the assembled crowd.
“Excuse me, lady, but I gotta eat quick, because I have a sick son in the hospital!”
“Oh yeah, well if he’s so sick you should be in the hospital with him, not here!”
The computer system kept crashing, and people trying to pay for their takeout orders waited nearly an hour. The whole time in line they kvetched and on their way out really let Jeremy have it. “That’s when I don’t envy his job,” Ariella said, as she got up, kissed Jeremy, and returned to work. Still, not a single person I met complained about the food, which was uniformly acknowledged as excellent.
“When I walked in I got tears,” said Jeff Jacobs, a longtime customer, as he waited for takeout. “I don’t see corned beef, I see my family celebrating occasions. I see my mother getting pink flowers from Abe on Mother’s Day. This is Jewish culture living. This is my family’s heritage living on.”
By seven o’clock the crowd wasn’t letting up, and I had to leave to meet friends. “Come,” Jeremy said, “let’s have a beer.” We headed down to the basement, into the small manager’s office packed with supplies. He’d been up for fifteen hours straight and probably had another five to go before he could even begin to contemplate going home. His forehead had broken out, and bags appeared under his eyes. He sucked back the beer and breathed deeply. “This is the first time I’ve sat all day,” he said. “I’d love nothing more than to sleep, but this is my newborn baby and there’s no way I can leave it now.”
I looked at Jeremy Lebewohl and saw in that young man’s drained face the future of the Jewish delicatessen. I didn’t tell him though. Of all the things he needed to hear on that first day of the rest of his life as a New York Deli Man, that wasn’t one of them.
We finished our beers and headed out into the cold, dark street. The lineup was still halfway down the block and growing. There were college kids, millionaire bankers, and poverty-stricken Holocaust survivors. There were families and singles, Jews and Asians, blacks and Hispanics, New Yorkers, Americans, and foreigners. All of them were standing in the freezing cold, in a constantly replenishing lineup that wouldn’t die down for weeks. I wished Jeremy Lebewohl all the luck in the world. Then I walked away, confident that at least one deli was safe.
Food and Yiddish Appendix
(for the goyim or woefully assimilated)
Soup (Go on, make it a meal)
Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls (a.k.a. kneidelach): The essence of all Yiddish life. Matzo balls are made from matzo flour, schmaltz, and seltzer. Can be either floaters, sinkers, or the rare, perfect mix. Your mother’s are always the best, and your mother-in-law’s are always the worst.
Mishmosh: Chicken soup fully loaded with matzo balls, kreplach, noodles, rice, chicken, and vegetables.
Cabbage Borscht: Some brisket, some cabbage, some beets, a little tomato juice . . . dinner for a month.
Berditchev Soup: Rare Polish vegetable soup with honey, cloves, and spices . . . think apple cider meets Campbell’s. Served in vaguely anti-Semitic Krakow restaurants.
Mushroom Barley Soup: Rib-sticking soup, often made with beef stock.
Forshpeis (Appetizers)
Knishes: Baked or fried pockets of dough, filled with potato, kasha, spinach, and sometimes meat scraps from the deli. Served with gravy or from New York vendor carts.
Kishke (a.k.a. Stuffed Derma): Beef intestine stuffed with chicken schmaltz, matzo meal, and the traces of what were once vegetables. Smothered in gravy, to reach every last artery.
Kreplach: Little dumplings filled with minced beef and onion, fried or boiled and served with caramelized onions or added to soup.
Kasha Varnishkes: Buckwheat grains and onions sauteed in schmaltz and tossed with bowtie pasta. Served with gravy if you want it to taste like anything.
Tzimmes: Stewed carrots with prunes, honey, raisins, and enough sugar to kill a horse.
Hush Puppies: Hot dog wrapped in a potato knish. Like a pig in a blanket, but somehow puppies are more kosher than pigs.
Gribenes: Chicken skins fri
ed in fat until they crackle. Jewish pork rinds.
Chopped Liver: Fried chicken (or beef) livers, chopped with eggs and fried onions. Loved by babies, despised by kids, rediscovered during pregnancy.
Schmaltz: Fat, most often chicken fat, rendered during the making of soup, cooled, and used for cooking, flavoring, or as an aphrodisiac to attract Jewish men.
P’tcha: Calves’ feet and garlic boiled and then cooled into a jelly, set in a mold and sliced. What’s not to love?
Gefilte Fish: Minced whitefish poached into a ball. Served with beet sweetened horseradish (chrain).
Coleslaw: Chopped cabbage, vinegar, sugar, spices, and for some (ugh) mayonnaise.
Latkes: Fried potato pancakes traditionally eaten at Hanukah. Served with applesauce and all too often a hockey stick.
Breads (a.k.a. Carbs)
Rye: Traditional Eastern European bread made with coarse rye flour and caraway seeds. The foundation of any deli sandwich. Best served double baked, ideally from Detroit.
Pletzl: Onion Kaiser. Also a nickname for Paris’s Rue des Rosiers.
Challah: Braided, sweet egg bread traditionally eaten on Sabbath eve. Perfect with a shmear of chopped liver.
Bagel: That’s a whole other book.
White Bread: Don’t you fucking dare.
Deli Meats (The Holy of Holies)
Pastrami: Spiced, cured, smoked navel of beef. The pride of New York, though L.A. does it well too.
Corned Beef/Salt Beef: Pickled and boiled brisket of beef. Good cop to pastrami’s bad cop. Best in the Midwest.
Salami: A sausage of minced beef trimmings, spices, fat, and enough salt to melt ice. Served cold, grilled, or fried with eggs.
Karnatzel: Romanian-inspired salami the width of a nickel. Only available in Montreal and best when hung to dry for a week or so.
Pickled Tongue: Like corned beef but with a big cow’s tongue. An edible French kiss.
Rolled Beef: A navel butterflied, rolled, tied with string, then cured and smoked like pastrami and sliced paper-thin and cold. Carried by a handful of delis in New York on elusive days.
Baby Beef: Pickled and lightly smoked veal brisket, found only in Toronto. Disappearing rapidly.
Montreal Smoked Meat: Romanian-style spiced, cured, and smoked brisket. The best deli meat you’ve never eaten.
Roast Brisket: Simple oven-braised brisket. Bland but quite delicate.
Stuffed Chicken: Montreal specialty of minced chicken baloney. Made too often with pork!
Roast/Smoked Turkey: Why even bother?
Kosher Hot Dog: Because kosher-style hot dogs just won’t do.
Knoblewurst: Large garlic sausage, eaten hot off the griddle.
Speck: Paprika-dusted, twice-smoked slices of pickled fat from a brisket. Deadly to Saxes.
Combinations (For true gluttons)
Reuben: Corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing on grilled dark rye. So goyish it’s practically kosher.
Mains (. . . Now that you’re warmed up)
Flanken: Boiled beef short ribs served in beef or chicken broth. The fattier the ribs, the better.
Fricassee: Stew of chicken parts (usually wings/drums) and perhaps meatballs in a tomato-based gravy. One of the more fun dishes to pronounce.
Stuffed Cabbage: Cabbage leaves stuffed with rice (vegetarian) or rice and ground beef, in a sweet tomato jus. Fart factory.
Tongue Polonaise: Sliced broiled tongue in a sweet raisin sauce. When in doubt, drown it in sweetness.
Charbroiled Romanian Tenderloin: Also known as a skirt steak, a thin, fatty cut of meat that drapes off the place and is consumed with fried onions by old Jewish gangsters.
Cholent: Slowly braised stew of beans, potatoes, and meat. Traditionally eaten on the Sabbath, it requires prayer to digest.
Desserts (Because the diet starts tomorrow)
Rugelach: Dense little cookies/danish seasoned with fruit, nuts, cinnamon, and buckets of sugar.
Lokshen Kugel: Egg custard made with egg noodles, then baked. Like a sweet lasagna omelet.
Cheesecake: Baked, chilled sweetened cream cheese cake in a graham cracker crust with fruit or chocolate topping. Should constrict throat first, arteries later.
Blintzes: Crepes stuffed with farmer’s cheese or sweetened fruit and rolled like burritos. Served with applesauce, sour cream, and a bib.
Drinks (For digestion, of course)
Cel-Ray Tonic: Celery-flavored soda. Produced by Dr. Brown’s, supposedly a cure-all.
Black Cherry: Libation of choice for deli drinkers. Dr. Brown’s in the U.S., Cott’s in Canada.
Seltzer: Bubbly water. Billed as “2 Cents Plain,” costs $2.50. The nerve.
Tea: Best drunk out of a glass with lemon and spilled over half the table.
Coffee: Decaf only. Be sure to ask waitress ten times if it’s decaf, then complain that it isn’t strong enough.
Key Terms (So you don’t sound like a schmuck)
Fress: To eat a lot. A big eater is a fresser. “He polished off two sandwiches and a knish. Quite the fresser.”
Nosh: To eat a little. A nibbler is a nosher. “I’ll stop by, but just for a nosh.”
Bissel: A little bit. “Gimme a bissel of that chopped liver.”
Chutzpah: Nerve. “You got a lot of chutzpah to ask for butter on that sandwich.”
Gonif: A thief. “Sixteen dollars for a sandwich? Those gonifs!”
Meshugah: Crazy. “You’ve gotta be meshugah to pay those prices.”
Kibitz: To joke. “Mel Brooks was in yesterday, kibitzing with everyone.”
Plotz: To keel over. “I ate so much I could plotz.”
Shonda: A shame. “They took herring off the menu . . . such a shonda.”
Schmutz: Dirt. “There was so much schmutz there it was like eating in a bus station.”
To Die For: The highest culinary compliment. “The rolled beef was to die for” or “The rolled beef: to die.”
Zay Gezunt: Be in health. “See you next week. Zay gezunt.”
Ess Gezunt: Eat in health. “Ess Gezunt. Enjoy that sandwich.”
Shmear: To spread, though also a term for all spreads. “What kinds of shmear can I get with this bagel?”
Kvetch: To complain. Every diner’s right at a deli. “She came in, ate, and then kvetched at me for twenty minutes about the soup’s color.”
L’Chaim: Cheers. “Is it cool to say l’chaim with Cel-Ray?”
Maven: A master. “Ziggy Gruber calls himself a deli maven.”
Goyish: Gentile, or exuding a non-Jewish vibe. “That deli is really goyish. I mean, they serve lobster rolls.”
Treyf: Unkosher. “I don’t eat Reubens, they’re pure treyf.”
Haymish: Like home. “Such a haymish deli. His mother’s in the kitchen.”
Listing of Delis
Over the course of researching this book I visited many Jewish delicatessens around the world. Most of these made it into the book, but some did not for reasons having primarily to do with space and the flow of the story. These delis listed below are those that I specifically visited during my three years researching this book. It is by no means a comprehensive list of all Jewish delis, either past or present, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.
Part I: New York
Chapters 1-5
Liebman’s—Bronx
552 West 235th St
Bronx (Riverdale), NY 10463
(718) 548-4534
www.liebmansdeli.com
Loeser’s—Bronx
214 W 231st St
Bronx, NY 10463
(718) 601-6665
Adelman’s—Brooklyn
1906 Kings Hwy
Brooklyn, NY 11229
(718) 336-4915
Caraville Glatt/Essex on Coney—Brooklyn
1910 Avenue M
Brooklyn, NY 11230
(718) 336-1206
www.caravilleglatt.com
David’s Brisket House—Brooklyn
533 Nostrand Ave<
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Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 783-6109
Gottlieb’s—Brooklyn
352 Roebling St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 384-6612
Junior’s—Brooklyn—various locations
386 Flatbush Avenue Extension
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 852-5257
www.juniorscheesecake.com
Mill Basin—Brooklyn
5823 Avenue T
Brooklyn, NY 11234
(718) 241-4910
www.millbasindeli.com
Kensington Kosher—Long Island
27 Middle Neck Rd #A
Great Neck, NY 11021
(516) 487-2410
Artie’s—Manhattan
2290 Broadway
New York, NY 10024
(212) 579-5959
www.arties.com
Ben’s—various in Manhattan, Long Island, and Florida
209 W 38th St
New York, NY 10018
(212) 398-2367
www.bensdeli.net
Carnegie Deli—Manhattan
854 Seventh Ave
New York, NY 10019
(800) 334-5606