Save the Deli: Why I want to save the Deli

If we’re going to save the deli, we’d better have a good reason.

By DAVID SAX
Bagel filled with vegetables 311 (photo credit: Stock photo)
Bagel filled with vegetables 311
(photo credit: Stock photo)
This question came over my cell phone two and a half years ago, in the parking lot of Canter’s Deli, in Los Angeles.  On the other end of the line was Mel Brooks, legendary comedian, filmmaker, and Jewish icon, whose trademark rasp was calling to task my motivation for visiting hundreds of Jewish delicatessens around the world, eating their food, and chronicling their stories. 
I told Mel Brooks that I had dangerously low cholesterol, and this was the only way I could survive. 
RELATED:Save the Deli: The Feast of AweSave the Deli: The day the delis stood still
Since I began research on the subject, and launched the website savethedeli.com in January 2007, I’m asked variations of this question regularly.  Now that my book, Save the Deli, is about to be published on October 19th, I’m forced to answer it daily.  What on earth possessed me to take up the quest to save Jewish delicatessens from their journey to the dustbin of history?  Why, of all the things I could do with my career as a journalist, did I chose to pursue this, forever affiliating my name with the holy trinity of pickled tongue, corned beef, and pastrami.  
The easy answer is that I simply love delis, that these restaurants occupy a central part of my edible, Proustian memory, and that I do it for the security of knowing there will be a matzo ball soup served when my first child is born. 
The roots of my quest to Save the Deli began back in 1996, on a warm December day in New York City. I was all of 16, visiting the city for the second time with my friends from summer camp, Steely and Scott.  After taking the train in from Philadelphia with Scott’s mother, we’d eaten breakfast at the Carnegie Delicatessen. After an hour of meandering around the Village, shopping for music t-shirts and drug paraphernalia, Scott had a plan for a monumental lunch. 
Every time he’d come into the city with his parents, they’d gone to Wolf’s Delicatessen, up at 57 West 57th st. Wolf’s was once one of the many landmark delicatessens of Midtown, catering to the entertainment industry and office workers, and at one time expanding to several different locations around the city. As we walked the fifty seven blocks to Wolf’s, Scott detailed the treasures awaiting us; airy matzo balls, fried potato varenikas with sour cream, golden meat knishes, gorgeous pastrami and corned beef sandwiches piled sky high on fresh rye. By the time we arrived, nearly two hours later, starvation was the only force willing our exhausted legs to move further.
“Wait. What? What the hell?”  Scott blurted with hopeless confusion.  He was staring at 57 West 57th, at a window with the word Wolf’s Delicatessen stenciled on. But beyond the glass there was nothing but brown paper, covering the view inside the recently shuttered restaurant.  Astonished, Scott grabbed the nearest person and asked where Wolf’s had gone.  “It’s closed honey,” an elderly woman blurted back, “done, boarded up, out of business.”
A wave of defeat crashed over us and held us under. I imagine the feeling climbers on Everest endure when they are forced to turn back just feet from the summit, their struggle in vain.  In silence we dragged our weary souls back to Penn Station, returning to Philadelphia hungry, frustrated, and confused.
I never forgot that feeling, and I, like Jewish deli fans everywhere, have been unfortunate enough to experience it with shocking regularity. In 2000, when Montreal’s Brown Derby closed, in 2006, when the original 2nd Ave Deli suddenly shut, in 2008, when Miami’s Rascal House was demolished by real estate speculators, and just this past spring, when Coleman’s Deli in my hometown of Toronto, went belly up. 
I didn’t begin to realize why this was happening, or the scale, until the fall of 2001, when a friend and I wrote a term paper on the Jewish delicatessen business for a Jewish sociology class at McGill University in Montreal. What drove us to write it was a shared love of deli (Montreal is a haven of old-school, hand-cut temples of meat).  Without any studies or documents to cite, we began visiting and calling delis, talking with their owners about the business. 
What we found was startling. Delis everywhere were in decline. In DC, in Boston, in San Francisco, and in Chicago. In New York, once home to over 2000 Jewish delis, there were just under two dozen left. Every owner, with few exceptions, feared not just for their business, but the survival of the entire class of restaurants.  Demographics were a factor: customers were increasingly elderly, with fewer youth replacing them. Assimilation was as well: each successive generation of Jews born in North America was less inclined to make deli a regular part of their diet. 
When I set out to write the book in 2006, it was originally titled “The Death of the Deli”, and it was very much a swan song.  But as I traveled around the world, eating deli as far afield as Paris, Antwerp, and even South Florida strip malls, I felt the winds shift.  Delis were on the edge, but the lovers of deli were as strong as ever.  People were fighting back, willing to resurrect a cherished food because it hit the belly in the right way.  They didn’t need an obituary; they needed a call to arms.  They wanted to Save the Deli, and ultimately, I did too.
But I’ve also encountered many people who feel it shouldn’t be saved. They say it’s a relic of an era best forgotten, a collection of unhealthy food that’s killed more Jews than the Cossacks, a fetishism of Jewish American culture. Perhaps they’re right, that the deli is an anachronism, a slice of Jewish history that we need to leave behind in order to move forward.  Maybe they have a point.  Maybe the vegetarians and cardiologists and carb freaks are right.  Maybe the deli shouldn’t be saved. 
If we’re going to save the deli, we’d better have a good reason.  What’s yours?
David Sax is the author of Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen. He also runs the blog savethedeli.com and works as a freelance journalist in New York.