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Way back in 1972, while still in my Dadaist art student phase, I joined with fellow workers at the Cheese Board Collective to open a cafe in the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum. I put forward a clever name: Salvador Deli. Here was an opportunity, I argued, to go avant-garde and merge food and art in a museum setting, at least in our cafe's name. Turns out that my cafe cohorts thought the reference to deli fare was too downscale for our lofty culinary aims (French quiche, salads with real vinaigrette dressing, etc.) and opted for another name: The Swallow cafe. At least it was a pun!
Downscale food was, of course, the hallmark of the Jewish delis I grew up with in Los Angeles in the 1950s and '60s, and I loved it. It's no secret that deli is based on the style of preserved foods eaten by poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants, cheap and fatty cuts of beef cured with salt and spices and then, in the case of pastrami, the über product that determines the reputation of most delis, smoked.
By the 1990s, I had become a bona fide deli maven and a serious student of Jewish delicatessen culture and its biblically proportioned menu of Jewish classics. I found deli fare, however humble, to be a refreshing alternative to the precious French-inspired food I had been eating and working with in Berkeley since the '70s. But which historical incarnation of the Jewish deli was I studying?
The delis I hung out at, and started to write about, were the mid-20th-century diner delis that evolved in every American city where immigrant Jews had begun settling a century earlier -- from New York north and south along the Atlantic seaboard and west via Cincinnati and Chicago to California. The lack of gastronomic finesse at these delis and their often tawdry décor exuded, I thought at the time, a cozy Old World charm (the Yiddish word is hamish) and transcended the increasingly mediocre food.
This is the same deli that David Sax celebrates in his recent book, "Save the Deli," and promotes in this curious excerpt from his website's exuberant mission statement:
"Save the Deli stands for grease stained aprons, and worn cutting machines. For beat up tables, fading photos of B-list celebrities, and kids playing loudly while eating smoked turkey."
But is this deli really worth saving?
The narrative of decline
Built on the backs of late 19th- and early 20th-century kosher grocery stores and mom-and-pop shops selling European delicacies (delicat-essen), preserved meats, fish and vegetable pickles, and sandwiches to-go, our surviving diner delis with their glutinous portions are struggling now under their own iconic weight and paying the price for their past successes and excesses: moribund obsolescence.
Or so goes the narrative of deli decline that was articulated recently by the owner-operators of several new, mostly small and thriving Jewish delis from across America. The panel discussion held May 19 at Berkeley's Jewish Community Center of the East Bay was moderated by America's Jewish Julia Child, cookbook author and Jewish food authority Joan Nathan. Titled "Deli Summit -- Exploring the Thrills and Challenges of the Modern Deli," the panel included Noah Bernamoff of the Mile End Deli in Brooklyn; Ken Gordon of Kenny & Zuke's Deli in Portland; Evan Bloom of Wise Sons Deli "pop up" in San Francisco; and Peter Levitt of Saul's Deli in Berkeley.
The evening began with Nathan's brief overview of Jewish deli history. Her pithy Jewish-on-wry comment, "The past is always changing," provided an ironic context for an evening of serious cultural and culinary analysis and enough shtick to lighten the load.
All the panelists agreed that our American food revolution's focus on artisanal, seasonal and local products has rendered the mid-century model of the Jewish deli unsustainable, and as passé as your father's Lincoln Continental. Or, as the take-no-prisoners Bernamoff put it, the classic New York deli (and by implication, it's surviving imitators around the country) is "a joke."
You could hear a collective "ouch" ripple through the auditorium. Painful to hear for many boomers with happy childhood memories of this deli of yore. I personally would hesitate to apply that label to a few of my favorite old-line delis like Katz's in New York and Nate 'n Al in Los Angeles, no matter how gastronomically incorrect their products. In other words, like the Save the Deli crowd, I still enjoy them no matter what.
A narrative of renaissance
At the close of the Deli Summit, after panelists took turns describing their deli's food and philosophy, my fellow deli mavens rushed the stage to schmooze with these rock stars of a new Jewish delidom. There was a long line in front of Gordon of Kenny & Zuke's who presided on stage in his black and white "Body by pastrami" T-shirt, the living embodiment of his personal deli mission. I approached Karen Adelman, Levitt's partner at Saul's Deli in Berkeley, and she neatly summed up the panel's vision of the deli's future:
“The new deli might look a bit like the very old deli -- small and specialized -- but regardless of what it looks like, if you close your eyes and eat, you will know where you are.”
It should be noted that talk of deli renaissance has been in the air for a number of years, and Adelman and Levitt were announcing their version at Saul's when some of the summit's panelists were still teenagers. It combined California cuisine principles of fresh, seasonal ingredients and "clean" deli meats (Niman Ranch pastrami was their anchor product for years) along with vegetarian dishes from the lighter and healthier Sephardic Jewish repertoire, like tabouli and hummus. What else would you expect from delimen operating in the heart of Berkeley's fabled Gourmet Ghetto, a matzo ball's throw from Chez Panisse, the Cheese Board and old-school Alfred Peet's original Euro-style coffeeshop. Michael Pollan has been a Saul's regular for years. Need I say more?
But despite Saul's rich contribution to the Bay Area's lean deli universe, it still must straddle the deli's decline and renaissance divide -- a high-end diner deli with downwardly mobile "very-old deli" aspirations. In a struggling economy, Saul's faces bigger challenges than the newer and smaller delis represented at the summit, like Wise Sons Deli in San Francisco.
An homage to pastrami
Soon after the Deli Summit, I hightailed it to Wise Sons Deli, a Saturday-only pop-up in Jackie's Cafe on Valencia Street, south of Market Street. The Great Recession has, ironically, been a boon to new kids on the block like partners Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman. With limited capital requirements and scaled down décor and menus, they have an advantage over large brick-and-mortar delis like Saul's. As co-owner Bloom told me after my feeding frenzy,
"The recession has created a renaissance around comfort food, with empires being built with reinvented classics. People are increasingly looking for small artisan producers whether in the coffee, clothing and butchery trades, or with deli sandwiches, donuts, fried chicken and cookies," Bloom said.
I can't say that I was totally comfortable at this homage to pastrami in terms of what I call a deli's noshtalgia factor -- the Jewishy ambiance that evokes happy childhood memories. I felt like the proverbial sore thumb at some ultra hip 30-something SOMA deli disco. We'll see what Wise Sons feels like when Bloom and Beckerman find a permanent site. In the meantime, their rich, smoky pastrami was divine food, indeed. And as Adelman predicted, all I had to do was close my eyes while wolfing down my sandwich and I knew exactly where I was -- mom-and-pop deli heaven, the Lower East Side of Manhattan circa 1920.
What I got out of the Deli Summit is the flip side of Nathan's existential quip about how the past is always changing. In terms of the Jewish deli, the future always stays the same -- people of every persuasion gathering to eat downscale Jewish comfort food in a casual setting with, preferably, a hamish feel. The double whammy of an American food revolution and a humbling recession has brought the tired midcentury deli to its knees. But thanks to a new crop of "very old" modern delis, and a few innovative diner delis, the prospects for a long prayed for Jewish deli renaissance are finally looking up. Thank God and mazel tov!
L. John Harris is a writer, cartoonist and filmmaker living in Berkeley and Paris. His 1995 film, "Divine Food: 100 Years in the Kosher Delicatessen Trade" was co-produced by Bill Chayes, the former curator of the Judah L. Magnus Museum in Berkeley. Harris also launched the Deli Project at the Magnus to house his collection of deli artifacts, menus and interviews with delimen across America. More than 90 of Harris' Foodoodle cartoons appear in his recent book, "Foodoodles: From the Museum of Culinary History."
Images, from top:
Wise Sons' house-made, smoky-flavored and hand-sliced pastrami on crusty double-baked caraway rye.
Salvador Deli
Credits: L. John Harris
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