Sy, Rose, and Ari: legends of Motown

Day 6 of Deli Road Trip-Chicago, Il

I’ve finally arrived in Chicago after a freezing white knuckle drive on icy roads where I saw more accidents than ever before in my life. Now I’m in the comfort of an airport hotel room, watching Da Bears fumble away a Superbowl.

Detroit and its surrounding suburbs provided a great start to the road trip, being a city full of character, quirky Yids, and a deep love of corned beef and double baked rye. I saw gleaming suburbs, quaint college towns, and the stark urban blight of an abandoned city, where the lines of race and economics are as stark as ever.

I’d like to use this post to start a feature I call “Profiles of a Deli Man”, and in this case a woman. A Deli Man is more than just a deli owner. He/she is the embodiment of the delicatessen’s ideal; someone whose very core is linked to their deli. A deli owner may run a delicatessen, but a Deli Man will live for their delicatessen. A Deli Man can work any job in a deli, from cooking the matzo ball soup, to cutting sandwiches and waiting tables. He is a tireless and selfless creature and the Jewish delicatessen exists today because of the Deli Men out there.

In Michigan I met a host of deli owners and workers, who were all very kind and interesting, but I want to talk about three figures in particular who stand out in my mind as exceptional Deli Men (and Deli Woman).

1. Sy Ginsberg - Owner, United Meat and Deli - Detroit

There’s precious little I could have gotten done in Michigan were it not for Sy. When I walked into a deli where I didn’t have an appointment, all I had to say was “Sy Ginsberg told me to come here” and the smiles would come out. Sy is a Deli Man to the core, having worked in delis, owned delis, and now acting as one of the Midwest’s biggest suppliers of corned beef, produced under his own name “Sy Ginsberg’s Corned Beef”, a sensational product.

Sy showed me the ways of the product, walking me through the United Meat and Deli factory in Detroit, showing me step-by-step how corned beef and pastrami are made. I’ve uploaded some videos to take you through the process.

Step 1 - Raw beef briskets that are vacuum sealed get unpacked and trimmed on a conveyer belt.

Step 2 - The briskets are fed into a pickling machine. Once inside, each brisket is injected with the pickling brine (a mixture of salt, sugar, garlic, and Sy’s secret spices) by way of 50 hypodermic needles which penetrate the meat to fill it with the tastiness that also preserves it. The pickled briskets slide out the other end into vats to sit for a day

Step 3 - Though Sy sells most of his delis pickled and uncooked corned beefs, he does cook several for mostly non-Jewish customers who don’t want the hassle of (or don’t know how) to properly prepare the meat. Sy cooks these in individual bags, in aerated water, according to strict USDA standards.

Step 4 - These are then trimmed and vaccum packed to ship out.

Sy also showed me the pastrami process, which involves rubbing the Navel (a fatty cut of meat below the brisket) with a mixture of dry spices (mainly cracked pepper, salt, coriander, mustard seed, and burnt sugar), then letting it cure for a day before smoking it with hardwoodchips in a computerized oven.

After the factory tour, Sy and I went to Lou’s, a deli where he used to work when he was a teenager, in his old neighborhood of Northwest Detroit. Today Lou’s sits in the same place, though it exists in another world, surrounded by liquor shops, baptist churches, and shuttered windows. Though a picture of Lou himself hangs, nothing else is the same, the most obvious difference being the shield of bulletproof glass that seals off the counter and kitchen from the customers. You place orders via microphone, slide your cash into a bulletproof drawer, and when you’re food is ready it comes out on a bulletproof lazy Susan.
Welcome to Detroit.

2. Rose Guttman - last of the Deli Women

Sy’s friend Ron Forman (himself a formidable Deli Man) told me that I had to meet Rose Guttman if I gave even teh slightest damn about Detroit deli history. I visited the deli where she worked shortly after, Ember’s, which appears to be more of a diner, owned as it is by a Montenegran family with Tony Perkovic at the helm. “You come back tomorrow morning to see Rosie, OK?”

Boy was I glad I did. Stepping back into the kitchen I came upon a force of nature in a 5 foot-nothing frame, scurrying and rushing about with the energy of ten men twice her size and a third her age. Rose is 79, a native of Romania and survivor of the Nazis. Her late husband Irving and her ran Irving’s deli in the Detroit area for years, building it into a successful chain until they sold out over two decades ago. Now she’s cooks for Tony in the mornings, adding the traditional Jewish flavor that his deli needs.

When I got there she was all aflutter, racing to finish her weekend prep before Shabbat. She was slicing huge pans of delicious brownies and cakes, literally shoving the trimmings in my mouth and scorning me if I refused. She scooped matzo balls with a fury and stacked knishes in a tempest, all the while chatting away forcefully and dropping such choice quotes as, “Life is like a bowl of cherries deary…you pick out the sweet one’s but sometimes it’s da pits.”

When the last morsel was ready, she whipped on her jacked, planted everyone with a two handed kiss on their head and scurried out the door to go home and prepare another meal.

I sat down and tasted her goods and lord o mighty were they incredible. Matzo balls that were somehow both airy and dense at the same time, with an amazing almost honeycomb texture to them…bathed in a golden amber broth.

Then I tried her corned beef knish, wrapped in the most delicate and crisp homemade pastry and filled with a perfectly moist mixture of crumbly corned beef (Sy Ginsberg’s…natch) and bits of what I gathered were kasha.

Lastly I indulged in Rose’s heavenly blintzes, crisp on the outside, and when my fork broke the surface of a fruit one it burst through with a glistening ruby strawberry filling which I mixed together with the sweet cheese from the other blintz and a healthy dollop of sour cream and apple sauce.

This is a woman who cooks not for the money, or for any recognition, but because she loves the food, she loves the work, and it’s her life. My hat goes off to her.

You can taste her cooking every day at Tony’s Ember’s Deli. 3258 Orchard Lake Rd. Orchard Lake, Mi. 248-683-3344

3. Ari Weinzweig - Sustainable Deli Guru

Ann Arbor’s Zingerman’s is to deli what Ben and Jerry’s is to ice cream. It is a business that manages to combine the best of boomer beliefs (a fun workplace, socially conscious ethos, a belief in the best products), while retaining all the taste of a fantastic deli. Ari is one of two founders, and a true visionary. He’s built a multi-million dollar empire out of a small Jewish deli he opened in a Midwestern college town twenty five years ago.

Zingerman’s is incredible, if not overwhelming. The lineups are staggering, the choices enormous. Aside from the traditional Jewish items, including the requisite Sy Ginsberg corned beef, they have a massive selection of gourmet oils, chocolates, meats and cheeses. No other deli I know of bakes their own bread, including challah, hamentashen, and double rye (a Detroit specialty…rye that’s twice baked for a truly crisp crust). Even though Katz’s and Schwartz’s deli purists may scoff at the somewhat cartoon atmosphere, decor and menu at Zingerman’s, rest assured that Ari’s ethos all comes down to one thing: taste.

Every product, every ingredient, every decision from the grind level on the coffee to the method for making bagels, is researched, honed and perfected over the course of years. Currently Ari was discussing introducing a Montreal smoked meat sandwich and said that doing so would require a trip to Montreal, and then a minimum of two years of tinkering until it becomes a regular item. What chutzpah!

And yet…the food was amazing. Sy’s corned beef tasted incredible on a Reuben, (Detroit style…with coleslaw), even better with Sy by our side as we ate. Blintzes were filled with a farmer’s cheese they make themselves, but brought up a notch with hints of vanilla bean and chestnut honey. The Corned Beef hash was the best I’ve ever had…not the mush one usually finds, but a chunky, meaty, perfectly balanced mish mash of goodness. This is deli for the Food TV set, and though Ari pushes the bounds of traditions, he does so with a deep respect, never trying to be gimmicky, always aiming for a taste of perfection. Zingerman’s 422 Detroit Street, Ann Arbor, Mi. 734-663-3354

To Sy, Rose, and Ari, I thank you and salute you. Deli in Michigan owes you all a great debt.

DS

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Deli Men. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.