CBS Sunday Morning (for real)
Sunday, December 5th, 2010Et voila…
Saveur Roots of Deli article now online!
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
For all those who couldn’t wait to buy the paper edition (or can’t find Saveur, or are just cheap), good news. The article is now online at Saveur.com. While the text is there, I implore you to pick up a paper copy to see Landon Nordeman’s amazing photographs (including the beauty of Schwartz’s Frank Silva, above) and just experience this as you should.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ARTICLE AT SAVEUR.COM
CBS Psych! (but here’s an online taste)
Monday, November 22nd, 2010Ok, so if you tuned in yesterday to CBS Sunday Morning, you undoubtedly didn’t see me. I got a call late on Saturday night from the producer that my segment was being held until this coming Sunday, which is right before Chanukah. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time (I was out eating pizza at this magic place), to update, and I apologize to those of you who tuned in disappointed. What can I say…tune in this sunday…hopefully I’ll be there (I’ll actually be in the Bahamas).
However…all is not lost. CBS did post a story on their website linked to the filmed piece. So read this and enjoy.
Delis: Timeless Temples of “Jewish Soul Food”
Jewish Delicatessens Preserve Traditions Beyond What’s on the Menu
(CBS) Tradition . . . it’s the main ingredient in every dish at an authentic Jewish delicatessen.
From corned beef to chopped liver, matzo ball soup to grilled salami - this is the taste of tradition: rich, spicy, and good for your soul (if not your cholesterol).
For more than 50 years, Jack Lebewohl and his family have done a few things right: Their Second Avenue Deli is a temple to Jewish-American cooking, where the sandwiches are so big, they’re downright intimidating.
How does one eat one of their pastrami sandwiches?
“How do I eat it? Fatty,” said Lebewohl. “Anyone who takes a lean pastrami sandwich, they think it’s healthier, but it’s not better, it doesn’t taste as good!
“And if you’re going to do it, do it right,” he said. CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST
Tune in this Sunday AM on CBS (and another Saveur note)
Friday, November 19th, 2010
Just a reminder to everyone out there to tune into CBS Sunday Morning for the Save the Deli segment. The show starts at 9 am (if you have to ask the day and channel…think twice), and I don’t know what time the segment will be on. But it should be fun. Or entertaining. Or newsy. Either way, I have a mustache for Movember, so tune in.
Also, I neglected to mention in my note about the Saveur story yesterday the sensational opening essay by Besty Andrews about her grandmother, the deli lover. It’s touching, funny, and as unschmaltzily nostalgic as something like that can be. Buy the issue and read it.
UK love from BBC Newshour and Guardian
Friday, November 12th, 2010
I’ve been meaning to post about this for a few weeks, but have been traveling a lot, and really don’t have that good of an excuse why I haven’t. They’re actually pretty exciting. Despite the fact that I don’t have a UK publisher, Save the Deli has gotten good press over in Britain, with coverage last year by the Independent and some Brit food bloggers. Considering there’s an entire chapter devoted to London’s salt beef, this hasn’t come as a total surprise, but I’m always astounded when it continues.
A few weeks back, in New York, I was interviewed by a BBC correspondent at Adelman’s Kosher Delicatessen in Brooklyn. She recently sent me the story, and I’m hoping the MP3 widget below works. This went out on Newshour, which is the Beeb’s international radio news show. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MP3 OF THE INTERVIEW
The other coverage is the article many of you have been waiting for. Guardian writer Tim Hayward uses Save the Deli as inspiration to pursue recipes for proper rye bread, pastrami, and yes British deli lovers, salt beef:
I write as nothing more than a greedy gentile but it seems to me that salt beef, though originating in Ashkenazi cuisine and firmly rooted in urban Jewish tradition is going to be a tremendous loss to all of us. It’s part of a wider picture of city eating. (Until I read Sax’s book I hadn’t realised that the majority of New York’s “kosher” delis were actually nothing of the sort, with the word standing in as a sort of awkward euphemism for “Jewish”. The great Reuben sandwich, combining meat and dairy is about as forbidden as you can get under kosher laws yet it was the mainstay of many delis. Anyone wishing to truly keep kosher would need to seek out the “Glatt Kosher” delis of which, at their peak there were only ever a handful). In spite of its roots, salt beef has become latterly, it seems to me, as much “urban” as “Jewish” and every bit as much about London as New York.
Click through to the article and you’ll find detailed recipes with beautiful photographs (including the two above), on how to create deli from scratch.
A Save the Deli TV teaser, and a guest spot on Food Network
Friday, September 24th, 2010It’s friday, time to kick back in front of the tube and just let the brain turn to mush.
What’s on? Why it’s the Save the Deli TV teaser. Basically, I shot this with Christopher Farber (who did the book’s cover) last month at Hobby’s in New Jersey, as a sort of audition tape for the Food Network. They didn’t offer me a show in the end, but at least you all get to watch me in HD.
Save the Deli: Hobby’s Delicatessen, in Newark, NJ from Christopher Farber on Vimeo.
Now, if you want to see me on the big screen, tune into the premiere of the new Food Network show Meat and Potatoes tonight. It’s exactly how it sounds, a carnivore’s dream, and the pilot episode stops by Brooklyn’s Mile End, to visit with everyone’s favorite 20 something deli owning couple, Noah Bernamoff and Rachel Cohen. I make an appearance as resident expert, or Customer #3. Either way. Good times.
10pm tonight on Food Network USA (sorry Canada, we still suck)
In Its Prime: Romanian Jewish Steakhouses
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Have a little story in Tablet today about the Romanian Jewish Steakhouse of yore:
In Its Prime
Recalling the heyday of the Romanian-Jewish steakhouse
With smoke from backyard grills perfuming our cities, the appetite once again turns to steak. This summer’s been extra meaty, thanks to Steak: One Man’s Search for the World’s Tastiest Piece of Beef, by journalist Mark Schatzker. To find out what makes a great steak Schatzker visited ranches and breeders across the United States, Japan, Argentina, and Europe, breaking down the science and culture of cattle rearing for taste with tremendous wit and detail, even going so far as to raise his own cattle. Having lived in Argentina for a few years (where I once ended the Yom Kippur fast with a barbecue), I know my way around a grill and a cut of beef, but I now see that I’m a rank amateur compared to Schatzker.
In the book, Schatzker documents a love of steak that he inherited from his father, a Polish Holocaust survivor who ate his first steak at a small-town northern Ontario restaurant in 1952 and hasn’t tasted anything as good since. The father’s experience was similar to that of many Jewish immigrants: In North America, they found that beef, a seldom-eaten luxury in Eastern Europe, was relatively cheap and readily available at local supermarkets. As newcomers settled into suburban houses with backyard grills, steak became a symbol of prosperity, a way of sharing in the affluence bestowed by citizenship in a new country.
Outside the house, the embrace and consumption of steak as emblematic of the American Dream manifested itself in the popularity of Romanian Jewish steakhouses, a culinary hybrid that’s all but extinct today. According to food writer Arthur Schwartz, whose grandfather was a waiter at Brooklyn’s Little Oriental steakhouse, Romanian steakhouses, many of them kosher, flourished around Delancey Street at the turn of the century, later moving uptown to the garment district (Lou G. Siegel’s was most famous) and out to the suburbs. In New York, he estimates there were a dozen or more at their peak in the 1950s, with several dozen spread out across the country in cities with large Jewish populations. They were a step up from the workingman’s delicatessen, a destination for a night out on the town but still within the reach of families who saved a bit.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE AT TABLETMAG.COM
Unlike the boiled, stewed, or even baked steaks cooks would prepare in Poland, Russia, or Hungary, the Romanians knew how to grill, and in the United States they created restaurants where the main course, of flame-grilled marbled rib steaks or juicy skirt steaks (also called Romanian Tenderloin) would be complemented by favorite appetizers including chopped liver, knishes, and gribenes, fried chicken skins, that would be shared by the table along with the ubiquitous buckets of coleslaw and kosher pickles. The closest you got to salad was chopped liver tossed with sliced radish. There would be karnatzelach, a garlicky beef sausage made with baking soda, which gives it a springy texture and delectable crust.
The only establishment of this ilk still standing is Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, on New York’s Lower East Side. Ample shtick is served there along with the food—a keyboardist plays bar mitzvah music, everyone gets a T-shirt—but the setup is genuine: rec-room basement décor, sarcasm-tinged service, bottles of seltzer and jars of liquid schmaltz on the table, some of the finest chopped liver known to man, and flame-broiled cuts of meat loaded with sautéed onions. It is greasy, filling, overpriced. It is a blast.
As Jews climbed the socio-economic ladder, their steakhouses began to emulate those of the WASPs. Out went the cramped, rec-room look, and in came dimly-lit palaces of wood paneling and plush carpeting, often in the suburbs to which Jews moved in increasing numbers. Cocktail bars took a spot by the front, along with coat-check girls. Traditional dishes like p’tcha (jellied calves feet) were replaced by double-baked potatoes and iceberg salads. Kosher concerns faded, and non-kosher cuts like sirloin and filet were added to menus, as well as pork chops and shellfish. At Moishes in Montreal, one of the few high-end Jewish steakhouses still operating, waiters wheel out dessert carts at the end of the meal piled high with profiteroles and hot fudge sundaes.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE AT TABLETMAG.COM
Whether you visited Seymore Kaye’s in Queens, Duke Zeibert’s in Washington, or dozens of similar joints in Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, or Toronto, these were the haunts where real-estate machers and garmentos rolled deep in mink and sable and the parking lot overflowed with Cadillacs. This was Jewish dining at its most extravagant—with restaurants that belied their customers’ eagerness to be fully assimilated. Diners got French service, with tuxedo-jacketed waiters in white gloves, but the Yiddish taste remained, and the breadbasket was filled with challah rolls, pumpernickel, and fresh rye. Women in pearls picked at chopped liver, but there was a jovial atmosphere of back-slapping and kibitzing, and it never felt stuffy.
The Romanian-style steakhouse slowly died out, replaced on the low end of Jewish steak consumption by Israeli shish kebab restaurants and at the high end by fancy glatt kosher steakhouses, such as Prime Grill in Manhattan. Both iterations lack Yiddish kitchen flair. One is a multicultural mishmash, with less herring and more miso-glazed black cod, and the other is resolutely Middle Eastern. Fine dining for the younger generations of Jews now means sushi or Italian, and steak no longer means freedom as much as it means fat.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE AT TABLETMAG.COM
Deli hits the Food Wars on Travel Channel
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Tune in tonight to the Travel Channel, because it’s a New York pastrami battle on the new hit show Food Wars. The show takes a local food icon, and then weighs in on which local stalwart makes it best. For New York pastrami, it’s the hand slicing haven of Katz’s, vs. the haymish flavors of the 2nd Ave Deli. Oh man.
The beautiful, insightful, and ridiculously buff host Camille Ford interviews fans of both delis, their owners, and resident deli expert David Sax (that’s me!), about the art of pastrami and who does it best. Then there’s a blind taste test, and the winner is…
You’ll just have to tune in tonight at 10 pm EST to find out.
A Whole Lotta Stuff
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
photo courtesy of the Tribeca Trib
Well hello there, long time no see.
Yeah, I’ve been a bit absent lately, traveling in the past two weeks to Toronto (wedding planning), Whistler (skiing), and Florida (deli talking). Got back to New York yesterday, and headed straight for the James Beard House, where the Schmaltz to Remember dinner was a tremendous success. Many thanks to all who participated and helped organize last night. You’re all mentsches!
Now, because so much deli related news and stuff has piled up, I’m just going to run through it all today. Hold onto your mustard.
First off, the Brooklyn by way of Montreal upstart Mile End has earned the title of Best Deli of 2010 from New York Magazine:
Mile End, the barely open, instantly overrun Canadian-Brooklyn oddball, has already, in its infancy, reinvented the venerable form. This is a deli for locavores, a deli for the next generation of deli lovers, with a respect for tradition contemporized by a rare premium on great, fresh ingredients, cooked from scratch, smoked and pickled in-house, served with an unfamiliar (in the deli world, anyway) smile.
A few weeks back, I set out on a little mission with my friend, and journalist, Saki Knafo. He was writing about me for the Tribeca Trib, the neighborhood’s premiere paper, and we set off to find Jewish foods south of Canal St. Not an easy task, let me tell you. But after some decent appetizing at Zucker’s Bagels and Smoked Fish, we hit paydirt with the stellar matzo ball soup and knish at Izzy and Nat’s, in Battery Park City, which opened over a year ago. And then we capped it at an old favorite of mine, Amazing 66:
Finally, it was time for a visit to that most sacred of Jewish culinary destinations: Chinatown.
“All Jews love Chinese food,” Sax declared with rabbinical authority over a plate of pastrami-fried rice at Amazing 66 on Mott Street. According to Sax, the restaurant was founded by an accountant who spent a life-changing lunch hour with a Jewish colleague at the Second Avenue Deli. Sax pinched a pink speck of meat between his chopsticks and held it aloft, as though to punctuate a point. “Chinese food and deli,” he said. “The ultimate Jewish meal.”
By the way, if you want to hear me speak downtown, I’ll be appearing in conversation with Food Maven Arthur Schwartz, next wednesday March 24th, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. BUY TICKETS HERE
Now for some sad news. Not one, but two delis have recently closed.
First, Bloom’s Delicatessen, in Westchester, NY, has a “For Rent” sign in the empty window of their plaza, though oddly enough, their website is still running, and still awesome. Hopefully they’ll be able to reopen soon.
Second, Florida’s Deli Den has been forced to close after a dispute with the landlord. This was one of the last holdouts to serve the early bird special, and I spoke with Vered, the owner, a few years back. But keep holding your breath, because she intends to reopen somewhere nearby. READ ABOUT IT HERE IN THE SUN SENTINAL
But don’t fret too much deli lovers, because the unstoppable Ziggy Gruber apparently has a letter of intent to expand his Kenny and Ziggy’s empire into Dallas. Says the Dallas Observer:
“We have a letter of intent with the landlord, a nonbinding letter of intent,” he tells Unfair Park this afternoon. “They sent it, we went it back with the terms. We’re technically in negotiations now. We haven’t sat at the table. This is preliminary stuff. We’ve expressed interest in the spot, but the ball’s in the landlord’s corner, and it’s up to him. That’s all I can tell you. We’re waiting for the landlord to tell us.”
And finally, here’s a little number that was sent to me by a whole bunch of you. Recorded at a synagogue not ten blocks from where I grew up. Sorry, the sound is fairly awful:
It’s good, but this is clearly the king:
Dennis Miller and I chat deli
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
When I was a young lad, I worshiped at the alter of Saturday Night Live. Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, and most definitely Dennis Miller. Possibly the best political comic out there, regardless of whether you agree with his politics or not (he’s become quite the conservative).
So I was thrilled yesterday when I got an email from his producer, asking if I’d like to be a guest on the Dennis Miller Radio show. Here’s our talk from earlier today. I avoided the temptation to compare Putin and the SALT Treaty to a pastrami sandwich at Jerry’s.
