NY Times “At Jewish Delis, Times Are as Lean as Good Corned Beef”

Today, in the New York Times, Save the Deli!

Many thanks to Joan Nathan for this one. To thank her, buy one of her amazing cookbooks. Also, she wrote an accompanying recipe for kishke in the Times. There’s also an amazing New York Times video of Hobby’s Delicatessen. Click here to see it.


photo by Richard Perry/NYT

HOBBY’S DELICATESSEN & RESTAURANT in downtown Newark may have lost much of its more traditional clientele over the years, but it has held on to tradition. The corned beef and the tongue are cured for 14 days in stainless steel bins in the basement. The salamis hanging on the wall look as if they’ve been drying there, their flavor intensifying, since the Brummer family bought the place in 1962.

Samuel Brummer and his sons, Michael and Marc, even make their own matzo ball soup and potato pancakes.

But in Newark, as in so many cities, holding on has been tough for delis.

“In 1945, there were 12 delis in Newark,” said Samuel Brummer, 86. “Now we are only two.”

Old customers moved on, but new ones keep them going.

“Our clientele used to be 10 percent black and 75 percent Jewish,” he said. “Now it is 50/50.”

David Sax, a 30-year-old freelance writer, listened and nodded. Many delis are seeing more African-American customers.

“In many ways, deli owners in places like Detroit or Chicago have told me, they are better deli clients than Jews,” Mr. Sax said referring to African-Americans. “They accept it as it is. Take a corned beef sandwich. A Jewish customer will say, ‘I want the corned beef lean, from the middle of the brisket,’ because their grandfathers did. It’s like Jews going to a Chinese restaurant. They love it for what it is and they are better clients because of it.”

Mr. Sax loves delis for what they are and mourns the loss of so many of them around the country. For the last two years he has been writing the blog Save the Deli celebrating great delis and chronicling their demise. And this month Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing his book “Save the Deli,” an account of his journey of discovery through the world of delis, from New York to Toronto, Detroit, Miami and Los Angeles; London, Paris and Poland.

After digging into a sandwich of fresh roast turkey, with juicy white and dark meat carved off the bone, at Hobby’s, we headed to some Jewish delis clinging to old ways that stretch back a century.

When Eastern European Jews began immigrating to New York by the thousands in the late 19th century, they found delicatessens started by gentile German immigrants who had brought their pickled and smoked pork and beef to the United States.

photo by Richard Perry/NYT

CLICK HERE TO READ THE THE ARTICLE ON NYTIMES.COM

“Jews made the deli their own and carved out a niche for themselves,” Mr. Sax said.

Jewish delis began to predominate. By the 1930s, New York City alone had at least 1,500 kosher and kosher style, Mr. Sax said. Today there about two dozen kosher ones left.

Mr. Sax feels emotionally drawn to delis. “I grew up with salami sandwiches, baby beef and matzo ball soup,” said Mr. Sax (a Toronto native).

As an undergraduate at McGill University he took a course called “the Sociology of Jews in North America.” While researching a term paper on Jewish delicatessens in North America with a friend, he realized that little had been written about the business of delis. His blog and book will help remedy that.

What he found was not very encouraging. In the old days, everybody cured their own corned beef and pastrami, made their own pickles, and used bread from a neighboring bakery. Now, few even make their own matzo balls.

Zayda’s Kosher Deli in South Orange, N.J., is actually a supermarket that makes a line of kosher classics like kugels, chicken soup and kasha varnishkes sold at stores in the area like Shop-Rite, Fairway and Whole Foods. But when we stopped in at Zayda’s, there was no place to schmooze and no owner in sight.

“This is what the original deli was like,” Mr. Sax said. “It was a convenience store, a neighborhood grocer, a place to go for sandwich meats and kosher foods.”

Irving’s Delicatessen on Route 10 in Livingston, N.J., had room to schmooze, more than their owners would like. It’s in a plaza with several casualties of the recession, an Office Depot, a furniture store and a carpet store, all closed. Most of Irving’s 140 seats were empty in the middle of the day.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE ON NYTIMES.COM

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