Bagels in Space, Kosher Meth, and a new Florida Deli
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008I have a smattering of stuff today, though next week, with the opening of Caplansky’s in downtown Toronto, promises to be big.
First off…deli’s favorite cousin, the bagel, has finally made it into space. And not just any old Einstein’s or even H and H bagel…no sir. It’s my favorite Montreal bagels…the dense, hand rolled, slightly sweet, very chewy variety that are baked in wood fired ovens. Apparently the family that owns the Fairmount Bagel Bakery have a cousin who’s an astronaut.
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A Cautionary Tale
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008Jewish delis are one of the few restaurants where pretty much anything goes. You can make a mess, talk loud, jump between tables, and complain at the top of your voice, and it’s a safe bet that the owners have seen it all before. But Ariel Kraut’s cautionary tale, “Sonic Boom Ruins Deli Experience” published in the University of Wisconsin’s Daily Cardinal shows that even delis have a limit:
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Elegy for Rascal House and some tech notes
Monday, April 28th, 2008Welcome back to Save the Deli. After a Passover hiatus (which I DID NOT BREAK), I am now back in the land of gluten, yeast, leavening, and flour. Delis which took the past week off, have now reopened, prepping for the takeout summer season, and the eventual buildup to the crazy fall. The birds are chirping, the sun is out (or at least was last week in Toronto), and the trees are blooming. There’s even rumors of a new deli opening up here, but you’ll hear more later.
I’ve got a great elegy on the Rascal House a friend sent, but first, I want to make a brief note about the website.
Some of you have rightly complained that your comments are not being posted as soon as you make them. Often, it takes many days, and you want to know why. Well, the answer is SPAM. For every one legitimate comment, there are probably 100 ads for porno, penis enlargement, fake watches, and various other crap. Welcome to the great information superhighway…now sit in traffic. Each day I have to go through the comments, one by one, and dig out the real stuff from the dreck. I usually find them all, though occasionally I miss your words, and I’m always always late in doing so. What can I say? Be patient…I’ll get it eventually.
Also, many of you send me multiple emails via the form on the page. You only need to send once…even if you don’t receive a confirmation notice. Don’t worry, I get them all.
Now, I present today’s poetry “AN ELEGY ON THE CLOSING OF WOLFIE COHEN’S RASCAL HOUSE”
by John Mariani
“For a cast of Rascal House regulars, the end will come Sunday night, when the hallowed deli in Sunny Isles Beach closes its doors for good. Gone will be the red vinyl booths, the fabled corned beef sandwiches and stuffed cabbage, the cartoonish devil smiling impishly above the tattered green awning. “–The Miami Herald, March 29, 2008.
Oy, say it isn’t so that Wolfie’s gone,
The deli on Miami Beach bar none!
And tell me now where will its faithful flock
Now go to get a tasty hot kreplach?
For fifty-four good years it reigned supreme,
With bagels piled with lox and sour cream.
A place you’d go for liver chopped so fine,
And sour kosher pickles leave you cryin’.
To cure a cold the chicken soup will do,
To cure your broken heart some borscht for you!
And regulars will say what’s not to love
About the verdant grass soup that’s called shav?
In memory of the noodle pudding kugel
Blow loud and long and slow the gilded bugle!
No more the storied latkes of potato,
No more the cabbage sauced with lush tomato.
I know no better kishka of stuffed derma
In all of this wide, now sad terra firma.
I’ll dream of all those golden brown knishes,
And suffer pangs of hunger for smoked fishes.
The smell alone of hearty carrot tzimmes
That mingles with chuck steak and gently simmers!
The cholent! Flanken! Whitefish! Fatty brisket!
So many many people sure will miss it.
No blintzes stuffed abundantly with cheese?
Oh, tell me where to find their match now, please.
I may grow schmaltzy praising this and that,
But that’s what true schmaltz is—it’s chicken fat.
So Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House is shuttered,
And no one sliced pastrami as they cut it.
So here’s to fifty-four delicious years,
Ah, what I’d give for just a few more schmears.
A Vote for Langer’s is a Vote for Deli
Monday, April 14th, 2008
America is in the midst of a contentious electoral moment right now. Passions and rhetoric are running high, and the lives and passions of many are on the line. The debates try to sway the hearts of voters, and smear campaigns are just a part of the game, but at the end of the day, all that counts are the votes. (more…)
Harold’s tower of meat
Friday, March 28th, 2008If you can’t tell already, I really love Jewish deli. But I don’t love huuuuuge sandwiches, a la Carnegie or Stage heights. To me it’s simply a waste, and unless you’re participating in some sort of competitive eating binge, I just don’t see the sense in devouring a massive column of pastrami. If I had the ability to dislocate my jaw like a snake and digest it over the course of months…well, maybe I’d love it. But I’d rather just have one or two Schwartz’s smoked meat sandwiches, which, though just a 1/3 of a Carnegie sandwich, taste infinitely better.
But still, I have to respect someone who will ingest this sandwich that appeared in the New York Times today:
Photo: Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times
It comes from a New Jersey deli called Harold’s, and it is a veritable temple of deli excess. This hefty baby is 26 ounces of meat, which is almost two goddamn pounds. It’s sick, obscene, and utterly coma inducing, but if someone is going to pony up and eat that, my hat goes off to them.
Harold’s Famous Deli
www.haroldsfamousdeli.com
3050 WOODBRIDGE AVENUE, EDISON, NJ 08837
TELEPHONE: 732-661-9100 FAX:732-661-1605
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Esquire has Sandwiches on the Brain (and deli’s in there)
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
A few months back, as I was in the depths of book writing, my friend Jake called me up to tell me that Esquire was putting together an article on sandwiches. “Cool”, I thought, “a small piece on that most manly of meals. Hopefully they’ll put in some deli.”
Yesterday I clicked on esquire.com and beheld a veritable trove of sandwichocity. Not simply a mere article, the sandwich package was a series of essays, stories, ingredients, and lists, all devoted to the sandwich. And while there was a lot of subs, po’ boys, and other gentile incarnations, there’s a good amount of Jewish deli representation in there. (more…)
Rye oh Rye: A visit to Silverstein’s Bakery in Toronto
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
As any construction worker worth his hardhat will tell you, you can build the greatest, most lavish mansion in the world, with all the turrets and shark infested moats you want. You can make the faucets pour foie gras, and the shower rain down chocolate, but if that house isn’t on a rock solid foundation, you’re living in a very expensive dump.
Why do I harp on like I’m on some home improvement show? Becuase today I want to talk about the foundation layer of any good deli sandwich: Rye.
Two slices of rye bread are more than just the bookmarks of a delicatessen sandwich, be it corned beef, tongue, pastrami, smoked meat, Reuben, Rachel or some sort of Carnegie-esque gut busting combination. When your teeth first make contact with the sandwich, followed by your tongue, the first thing to grace your taste buds, to tickle your sense of texture, will be the surface of that thin slice of rye bread. It is the front lines in the battle for your mouth, and possibly the most important element of the sandwich besides the meat.
Good rye, whether with caraway seeks (aka ‘kimmel”), or not, whether cornmeal rolled, or not, is essential to the enjoyment of deli. The crust should crackle slightly, requiring a bit of effort to break through. It should smell somewhat sour, but in a pleasing way that offsets the sugars in the meat. Overall, it should be soft, and pillowy, yet firm enough to withstand up to a pound of hot meat and mustard. It must be real bread, the kind not found in supermarkets, but in bakeries and yes, delicatessens.
Good rye can liven up a mediocre sandwich. It can provide a bright note when the meat is less than perfectly tender, masking somewhat understeamed or poorly sliced briskets. Good rye has the above characteristics: the golden crust, the light blond centre with specs of brown, and a smell of breweries.
Bad rye is an atrocity. It can ruin the greatest sandwich, because your first impression will be stale bread, or one that is too airy and has no bite to it, no character. I’ve seen people take out Schwartz’s smoked meat and serve it on store bought rye, and let me tell you, there was nothing to write home about. Bad rye is a deli killer.
The best ryes I’ve ever had were in Michigan area. There, they double bake the ryes, which are larger loafs that are warmed in the oven before serving to give them an extra-thick crust, and a warm, steamy centre. Rather than cut them in an automatic machine (which does thin, even little slices), they will slice them by hand, or on a meat slicer, diagonally, to give you more crust. The result is incredible: big, meaty pieces of freshly baked bread to compliment the heft of a Sy Ginsberg corned beef sandwich. Magique. Some of the best are found at the Stage Deli, in West Bloomfield, where the late Jack Goldberg supposedly invented the double baked rye, and Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, where fresh rye is baked on site from the best possible ingredients, using methods unchanged for centuries.
Los Angeles has some great ryes too, especially at Langer’s or Brent’s, where the Detroit method is applied. There are also shitty rye cities, usually in smaller markets, where the bakers have never gotten it right. Sometimes they look like ryes and taste like white bread, othertimes they taste like white bread and look like rye. People say it has to do with the amount of dense rye flour in the mix (usually around 25%). Some say it’s the water. Others disagree.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting Silverstein’s bakery, right here in downtown Toronto, to see some rye in action. Silverstein’s has been around since 1918, is one of the last Jewish businesses downtown, and is still run by the third generation of Silverstein men. Their ryes supply all the great delis of Toronto without fail: Yitz’s, Pancer’s, Coleman’s, Steeles Deli, Centre Street, Wolfie’s, Switzer’s, and the New Yorker. They are gorgeously colored and textured palates for the artisans behind counters, wielding meats and mustard while assembling their masterpieces. Here’s a little video, to show you how it’s done.
1. Dough is mixed with a sour starter, that is live yeast which has been constantly going since day one of the business (90 yr old yeast!).
2. Dough is formed into balls, which warm and rise
3. Dough is formed into loaves, then warms again and rises
4. Dough is loaded into the conveyor oven, and travels 150 plus feet over 40 minutes at 420 degrees
5. Ryes emerge (yay), spin up and down a giant conveyor swirl that looks like a parking garage ramp, and emerge, ready to eat.
Brian Silverstein always recommends waiting to slice your rye at the last minute. Presliced, in a bag, will soak up moisture and lose its bite.
If you’re in Toronto, and downtown, head over to Silverstein’s and pick up a loaf right from the oven.
Silverstein’s Bakery Ltd.
195 McCaul St
Toronto ON, M5T 1W6
Phone: 416-598-3478
Fax: 416-598-5459
***Note*** The above movie was edited in the new iMovie 08, which is a stale industrial grade hot dog bun compared to the previous version (a Motown double rye). Read here for more anti-iMovie kvetching.
Deli Song, Oh My
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007Oh the random tidbits one finds when Googling deli words all day.
“A new beginning for Corned Beef Row”: Baltimore’s rebirth downtown and its delis
Thursday, October 4th, 2007
I came accross a very interesting article the other day on the website of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. The piece, titled “A New Beginning for Corned Beef Row” by Alan Feiler, details the urban renewal of Baltimore’s Lombard St., aka Corned Beef Row. Home to some of Baltimore’s best delicatessens, like Attman’s, Weiss Deli, and Lenny’s Deli. It is the city’s equivalent of Chicago’s Maxwell St, LA’s Fairfax, or New York’s Delancey. Lombard was once the teeming heart of Jewish Baltimore, then fell into disrepair and neglect as the Jews moved away, became a center for urban blight, and is now being renewed and gentrified. All through that time, delis like Attman’s and Lenny’s continued to serve pastrami to the masses, remaining anchors to the community that changed so rapidly. Now, a revitalization is in the air.
“And for anyone who has recently visited the neighborhood — which still houses the Jewish Museum of Maryland, a pair of historic, well-preserved synagogues and three terminally busy Jewish delis — it’s obvious that something is again happening at Corned Beef Row. Don’t look now but the old neighborhood appears to be coming back to life. “There’s a lot going on down here, and we’re optimistic and excited about the future,” says Dr. Marc Attman, owner and operator of the 91-year-old deli started by his grandfather, Harry. “Look around here, you’ve got to smile. It’s fantastic, a breath of fresh air. Things are happening — finally. We’ve been waiting a long time.” Dr. Attman is talking about the revitalization efforts taking place at Corned Beef Row that appear to be transforming the neighborhood — which largely consisted of vacant, dilapidated buildings and abandoned seedy properties since the riots of 1968 and subsequent flight and deterioration — into a clean, vibrant area of planned mixed-use and mixed-income residential and commercial life.”
The piece goes on to discuss the changes happening on Corned Beef Row, and the impacts it will have on the traditional institutions there. Old delis around the country are facing the same issues…what applies here also does to Brooklyn, and Chicago’s Maxwell St area. It is a beautiful confluence of urban affairs and deli, and one of the most important articles I’ve read recently.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
My Interview on Jewish Digest with Leslie Lutsky
Monday, October 1st, 2007An audio treat for you all this week. In June, while in Montreal, I was interviewed by the wonderful Leslie Lutsky, whose show Jewish Digest appears on the community station Radio Centreville each Saturday in that fine city. Sitting on the campus of my old university, Mr. Lutsky and I talked about the ins and out of the deli trade, this website, and my upcoming book.
Despite the fact that he is a vegetarian, Leslie Lutsky knows his deli. HE has traveled to many around the world, interviewed their owners, and quite often has ventured over to the greasy side and indulged in a meaty treat. His interview with me takes up the whole show, and is punctuated by the hillarious song Private OY! “Deli Detective” by the klezmer band The Kabalas.
The interview is in podcast form and will only be posted for this week. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT
My thanks to Leslie Lutsky for being such a mensch!
