One vote for the thriving Shapiro’s on Meridian in Indianapolis.
I never realized there were that many Jews in Delhi...
Jerry’s Deli in LA is a small chain...good stuff, but really expensive...I go there a lot. Not the best deli in the world, but pretty good, even by NYC standards.
Too big to fail?
The rueben sounds pretty good, the rest, not so much.
I prefer my chicken soup Vietnamese style, without “floaters”...
This IS an NPR report, so take it as such. Nevertheless, I am eagerly anticipating my trip next week to two hot beds of Deli-dom, South Florida and Manhattan.
Living in the deli Black Hole that is the Bay Area, I need some decent food, not corned tofu on 9-grain with stone-ground, organically grown mustard!
I must have my Reubens!
It’s not kosher, but I’m not Jewish!
The only area synagogue sponsors a festival where they fly in pastrami and other treats from NYC every year - very popular event, I think.
I like Benjie’s in Santa Ana, Calif.
The first time I sampled the food from Ben’s Best was in the early 60s, when Ben was alive and running the place, and I was a little leaguer.
He’s long since died and his son runs the place. It’s still good, but quite pricey for what it is.
I’d recommend Katz’s Deli in Manhattan: corned beef (or pastrami, if you prefer) piled four inches deep on rye with mustard, served with the best, freshest crackling cold Kosher pickles you ever had. Get a potato or kasha knish on the side, and enjoy with a Dr. Brown’s cream soda. It’s Jewish Heaven, but it may also be the reason why so many of my relatives had four-digit cholesterol readings.
Alas, we lack such an establishment in the DFW Metroplex...
Maybe they can get some stimulus money from their “Messiah”
Best food on the planet, bar none. But, yes, becoming difficult to find in this age of gustatory, eternally dieting, an@l retentives.
“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.”
Gravy? Nonsense. The secret is frying up several pounds of onions.
I just had a pastrami on rye for lunch. I love rye bread, almost all sandwiches taste better on rye - except maybe peanut butter and jelly.
kosher bump
Manny’s in Chicago. The only reason to visit that fascist enclave.
I have heard the main supply of meat is veal in Israel.
Don't know.
I worked for two years in a kosher deli, and the purists who wanted everything done like in Brighton Beach used to be a pain in the neck. Delis are simply places where people eat what they like. They get the food from where they can get it, depending on suppliers, what cooking facilities they have on hand, and health regulations. Brighton Beach was no different, and the cuisine served is a dynamic, commercial concern, which was constantly evolving then, and is still evolving. Sure, I occasionally cooked up some gribanis, which is fried chicken skin, but it’s so unwholesome and fatty that I felt I was murdering my senior citizen customers, so I stopped doing it. How un-”authentic” of me.
That really takes me back. When I was a young lawyer in New York, my cases would occasionally take me to the Queens County courthouse on Queens Boulevard. Every time, I would stop for lunch at Ben's, about two blocks away.