Posted on 04/15/2010 2:17:47 PM PDT by nickcarraway
WHEN a Jewish deli decides to stop serving salami, something is wrong in the cosmos.
At Saul’s Restaurant and Deli in Berkeley, Calif., the eggs are organic and cage free, and the ground beef in the stuffed cabbage is grass fed. Its owners, Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt, yanked salami from the menu in November, saying that they could no longer in good conscience serve commercial kosher salami.
“It’s industrially produced meat that gets blessed by a rabbi,” said Mr. Levitt, who came to Saul’s two decades ago from Chez Panisse, just down the street. “We all know that isn’t good enough.”
The two are still trying to find, or make, salami that will align with their vision of the deli of the future: individual, sustainable, affordable and ethical.
New delis, with small menus, passionate owners and excellent pickles and pastrami, are rising up and rewriting the menu of the traditional Jewish deli, saying that it must change, or die. For some of them, the main drawback is the food itself, not its ideological underpinnings.
So, places like the three-month-old Mile End in Brooklyn; Caplansky’s in Toronto; Kenny & Zuke’s in Portland, Ore.; and Neal’s Deli in Carrboro, N.C., have responded to the low standard of most deli food — huge sandwiches of indifferent meat, watery chicken soup and menus thick with shtick — by moving toward delicious handmade food with good ingredients served with respect for past and present.
“I have a dream of a multiplicity of pastramis,” said Ken Gordon, a co-owner of Kenny & Zuke’s, one of a handful of delis in the country where the pastrami is smoked over hardwood. It opened in 2007, an outgrowth of the
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Baby, let the customers decide.
If they can make it work at a profit and without subsidies, more power to them.
How can the New York Times run a story about Jewish delis without mentioning one of the most famous Jewish delis of all which is in New York City! Katz’s
SHOULD the deli be reformed? The free market will provide a fairly quick answer...
Oops! They actually do mention Katz’s on page 2:
“When I see tourists going into Katz’s, I feel a kind of rage,” he continued. “This is the food of my people, and places like that are turning it into a joke.”
(Later, in a calmer frame of mind, Mr. Bernamoff allowed that the pastrami at Katz’s is “pretty good.”)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14deli.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me
I’m guessing some of the comments in the article are meant to be a slam at places like Katz’s.
Will there be Reformed Delis, Conservative Delis, and Orthodox Delis?
Yes, they are not what they used to be. I grew up in that neighborhood but we moved in 1970. Mostly Puerto Ricans running the deli counter now.
"We" do?
I don't care what's in it...I don't care if the little white specks are actually toenail clippings...salami tastes GOOD. This chick is whack.
More toenail clippings for you.
There has been Reformed Delis, Conservative Delis, and Orthodox Delis in the US since the 1910’s. My family ran several Conservative, Conservadox and Orthodox Delis in NYC and Borscht Belt back in the day, the rabbinical seal means much more than you’d imagine to certain sects in the most traditional lineages.
That being said, can’t find a Jewish deli with corned beef to compare to an Irish pub in Montclair NJ these days.
Katz’s is really sad, as is Lansky’s which has lost the plot.
Artie’s and others are using Empire brand corned beef and pastrami, which is top of the line commercial, and a pretty uniform flavor, but that’s what this article is about, the loss of craftsmanship.
“When I see tourists going into Katz’s, I feel a kind of rage,” he continued. “This is the food of my people, and places like that are turning it into a joke.””
What a putz.
Sounds like the idiots who complained about the Taco Bell dog as discrimination.
Which Irish pub in Montclair?
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