Food for Thought

Two thirtysomethings turn their love of Jewish food into a cultural journey.

By RENEE GHERT-ZAND, NEW YORK
falafel (photo credit: Christopher Farber)
falafel
(photo credit: Christopher Farber)
YOUNG JEWISH MEN WHO may think they know a thing or two about their favorite foods have nothing on writer David Sax and filmmaker Ari Cohen. These two Canadian thirty-somethings, one of Ashkenazi descent from Toronto and the other from a family of Morrocan descent who immigrated to Montreal, have shown that they are willing to go the distance to uncover their culinary roots – Sax in a search to save the deli and Cohen in a quest for the perfect falafel ball.
So it came as no surprise that Sax suggested we conduct an interview at a deli in Brooklyn. And not just at any deli – it had to be at Gottlieb’s, an austere joint in hasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a façade so inconspicuous that you could very well miss it as you pass by and a décor that seems to have seen at least 50 years since its last renovation.
Sax, attractive, of medium height and with prematurely graying curly hair is dressed hip in jeans and an untucked plaid shirt. During the interview, he breaks away to chat with the waiter and pepper the counterman with questions about the day’s specials. He seems to try to act low-key, but it’s clear that Sax is somewhat of a celebrity around here, at least for the workers.
Fancy palaces of haute cuisine and celebrity chefs’ eateries du jour hold no real interest for Sax. He is excited about the fifteen-odd varieties of kugel offered at Gottlieb’s, but decides to nurse the cold he feels is coming on with some homemade chicken soup and a matza ball. He drains the bowl quickly and orders a second.
“I like the oldest, crustiest, most authentic restaurants,” he says.
Afreelance journalist by trade, Sax writes a food and business column for the magazine Business Week and articles for other major Canadian and American publications. He attributes his longstanding interest in food to his “deli genes” from his father’s side of the family and his time spent in his grandmother’s Montreal kitchen. His father, he relates fondly, initiated him into the rituals of “Montreal Jewish manhood,” which included hot handrolled bagels at St. Viateur Bagel Bakery and karnatzel, a long, thin Romanian beef salami. Sax even waxes nostalgic for his first taste of speck (paprika and cayenne-dusted, twice smoked slices of pickled fat), despite the fact that his grandfather died from a heart attack while eating a smoked meat sandwich piled high with the stuff.
But he insists that he tries not to write restaurant reviews unless they tell a bigger story. And that “bigger story” is what led this 31-year-old to develop a paper he wrote for an undergraduate sociology course at McGill University in 2001 into a book chronicling his epic journey in search of the world’s best pastrami. In 2006, Sax moved back to Toronto from South America, where he had been working as a freelance writer in Argentina and Brazil, to begin a year-long investigation into the culinary secrets behind the deli counter.
And, no less importantly, he sought to understand why and how demographic, economic and gastronomic trends are leading to what many view as an inevitable demise of the traditional Jewish delicatessen.
With his book proposal sold to the Canadian McClelland and Stewart publishing company, and an advance in hand, Sax set off in 2007 for a 3-month-long road trip through the United States and Canada, followed by a hop across the ocean to Europe, the birthplace of arteryclogging Jewish cuisine.
Sax chronicled his visits to family-owned restaurants and big chain establishments on a blog (savethedeli.com), which he later used to keep fellow deli aficionados updated on his book tour for “Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen,” which was published in 2009 and has since won the Canadian Jewish Book Award, a James Beard Award and a Canadian Culinary Book Award.
Sax has even given his blog a mission statement, a type of cri de coeur, written wittily yet with great seriousness: “Save the Deli is a space dedicated to the preservation of the Jewish delicatessen, a hallowed temple of salted and cured meats. The past half-century has seen the deli’s numbers decline greatly in New York, across the USA, in Canada, and Europe. Those that remain are endangered and in need of our support. Though the challenge is arduous, and the deli’s foes are many, we will persevere.”
Sax says he is drawn to the nexus between the business and the personal stories. “The deli is a personality-driven enterprise. These guys [the deli owners] take it very personally. They’re a very emotional group. Think about it: these are guys who put their names on their restaurants,” he says.
In the introduction to his book, Sax writes that his “crusade to save the deli” is inspired by the fact that these kinds of establishments, “worthy institutions: temples of worn Formica and chipped dishware fronted by a Jewish surname in the possessive…are disappearing faster than chicken fingers at a bar mitzvah buffet.” Heartbroken, he researches and explains how the Jewish exodus from the inner cities to the suburbs, increased health consciousness, and changed business models have rendered a late 19th century-early 20th century trade almost obsolete.
Having developed a taste for heavy Eastern European Jewish food early in life, the author had no difficulty downing smoked meat on rye after smoked meat on rye, matza ball after matza ball and kosher dill pickle after kosher dill pickle. An adventurous eater with an apparently iron stomach, Sax heartily sampled authentic, though less appreciated, delicacies among people his age, such as p’tcha (jellied calves’ feet) and kishke (stuffed intestine.)
Eating deli “is a regular thing for me,” he says. Even at home in Toronto, he eats it at least once every week or two. And when Sax is in New York – this time, on assignment writing about the coffee shop writing scene at Atlas Café (which he dubs “Laptopistan”) in Williamsburg for The New York Times – he goes for the deli. For him, it could be no other way once he is in “the de facto world capital of Jewish delicatessen.” He writes in his book that “the sights, sounds and tastes that tell us we are inside a Jewish delicatessen…emerged and evolved in New York City.”
He feels a responsibility to patronize New York delis while he still can. “Just as New York City was the place where our concept of the Jewish deli came into being, so it is in New York where the deli is facing its greatest challenge,” he writes.
When asked whether he was at all worried about his cholesterol level, he off-handedly replies, “It was OK the last time I checked.”
COHEN ALSO SEEMS UNFAZED by the health effects of his food-related odyssey. “I’ll admit that I have some extra weight, but I carry it well,” he tells The Report in a telephone interview from his office at Rotating Planet Productions in Montreal. The affable, loquacious Cohen speaks with exuberance about his film “Falafelism,” which documents his efforts to find the best falafel in the world and along the way learn more about the cultural identities and political views of those who make and eat it. He even dares to wonder whether a shared taste for the lowly fried chickpea ball might be able bring peace to the troubled Middle East.
Over the course of filming “Falafelism” during the summer of 2008, he estimates that he ate a total of 2,000 falafel balls. “That’s an average of 20-30 balls and 3-4 falafel sandwiches per day,” he calculates. “At first, it was completely enjoyable, but by the end, let’s just say that some systems weren’t working as well as they should have.”
Cohen, 38, immigrated to Montreal with his parents and older brother from Meknes, Morocco, in 1973. Having had to leave all their wealth behind, his parents worked their way up into the middle class. His mother had trained as a pharmacist in France and was able to work in her field in Canada while his father found employment as a pharmaceutical company representative.
For Cohen, like for Sax, a taste for good, ethnic food – albeit of a different sort – was in his blood – metaphorically, at least, if not in terms of HDL and LDL cholesterol levels. “We had great food all week long and then also on Shabbat,” Cohen, who attended Jewish day schools, recounts. “My parents always bought fresh fruits and vegetables by the boxful – just as they had in Morocco.” He would help in the kitchen, peeling almonds and mashing dough. “My mom was an incredible cook,” he says.
“There were 15 salads on the Shabbat table,” he recalls. “Then there was a fish dish, then lamb and couscous, and then all different kinds of desserts and fruit.”
streets of Montreal in search of the best examples of the fried chickpea ball. “Here I go again, searching for that tasty falafel. It’s out there and I’m real hungry. I’m on a mission to find the best falafel,” he says in a voiceover. His quest takes him eastward from Montreal to Israel and the Palestinian territories, and then back home via Paris, London, New York and Toronto. He had colleagues do additional filming for him in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, after he ran out of budget to safely finance doing the filming himself in these countries.
Founder of Montreal’s alternative Jewish arts and culture Chutzpah Festival, Cohen had several documentaries under his belt by the time he pitched “Falafelism” to backers. And although initially some international broadcasters and funding agencies said they were interested, they refused to actually put up the cash. “Come see me when it’s done,” he remembers potential funders telling him. Finally, OMNI, a Canadian television company specializing in multicultural programming said yes – with the caveat that he “keep it Canadian” and centered around culture and not politics.
The trilingual Cohen (he speaks English, French and Hebrew) was able to converse freely and endear himself with the many individuals whom he met on his journey, particularly the owners and workers in the falafel joints. He was especially drawn to the stories of Middle Easterners – Arabs and Jews – now living in Europe or North America. “I wanted to look at it [falafel] from the Diaspora perspective, and not just in the Middle East,” he says. “The Diaspora perspective is my perspective, too.”
The 45-minute documentary aired August 15, 2010 on Canadian television. Cohen is now working on editing in additional footage and turning it into a more hard-hitting, politically focused, full-length feature film that he plans to show at festivals, and hopefully sell to a distribution company.
BOTH SAX AND COHEN WERE compelled by the taste and textures of the foods that tickled their taste buds and satisfied their bellies. In “Save the Deli,” Sax describes his encounters with certain dishes in almost pornographic terms: “…As we began smearing whole-grain mustard on pieces of warm pletzel (onion roll) and applying the meat, our apprehension evaporated into exclamations of pleasure,” he writes, for example, about eating broust, or smoked pastrami, with a companion.
For him, a Montreal smoked meat sandwich is “…a glorious, debauched, greasy invocation of pure animal savagery. Heaven.” And he is, despite the imagery, talking about stuffed goose necks when he writes, “…An arteryslaying taste sensation. The outer layer of crisp, oily skin gave way to a creamy membrane of sweet fat, which bathed the smooth, earthy liver in an undercurrent of richness that was almost unfathomable.”
“Deli porn,” Sax says, is a known phenomenon. He jokes, however, that his publisher has implored him never to refer to “Save the Deli” by its initials.
Cohen, too, appears to have immensely enjoyed eating his way through the making of his film. He says he has sampled enough fried chickpea balls to recognize the subtle differences between them in different cities and countries, and to compile a list of his favorite falafel vendors, which range from sit-down restaurants to pushcarts.
He readily recommends Freiha Falafel in Montreal, a generations-old family business that originated in Lebanon. “Falafel is all they do – falafel and nothing else,” Cohen says. He also likes Paris’s As du Falafel, where they serve what he calls “salad bar falafel,” falafel sandwiches topped with tons of salads leaving you stuffed for the day. Among his other favorites is the familyowned Michel Falafel in Haifa, with its long heritage of spicy falafel.
“Falafelism” shows Cohen interviewing an impressive array of historians, food writers, journalists and diplomats from Israel and Arab countries as he traces this “poor man’s food” from its birth in Egypt (where it is known as ta’amiyah) through the various countries of the Middle East. He even manages to locate Dorit Maya-Gur, creator of a Falafel Man comic book character, and a French-Israeli rock band in Paris called Boogie Balagan that sings a headbanging song called “Falafel Power.”
The film also shows him spending time in New York with the owner of Alan’s Falafel, an Egyptian immigrant whose cart was once located in the shadow of the then-standing World Trade Center and was destroyed on 9/11. The owner is back at the same spot selling $3.00 sandwiches that are “lovely and cheap,” according to the filmmaker.
Ostensibly, in pursuit of whether this shared cuisine could bring about peace between Arabs and Israelis, Cohen says he is not so naïve as to think that a mutual love of falafel is enough to solve the conflict. Yet he and many of the people he interviews believe that sharing a meal, or at least recognizing a shared taste in food, can lead to more openness and tolerance.
Despite his love of falafel, it was the chance to meet people like the steadfast Egyptian cart owner that was at the core of Cohen’s mission. “I didn’t make the film because I’m a falafel fanatic, though I love to eat it,” he says.
Sax, too, says that he most enjoyed getting to know the people who made the food. “The relationships I developed with the deli owners is the best thing that came out of this,” he says. He had originally thought about writing a historical book, but ended up deciding to root “Save the Deli” in the here and now. What interests him is, “the food and everything around the food. It’s the connection between the food and everything else,” he explains.
SAX AND COHEN ARE BOTH aware that they are not alone in their quest to connect to their roots through food. Sax has a penchant for Chinese food (Sunday nights were traditionally Chinese food nights as he was growing up, and he and his wife – who shares his passion for food – maintain that tradition) and Cohen likes to dine with his wife on Ashkenazi and other ethnic foods.
“There has been an increased interest on the part of young Jews in food, especially in the past three years or so,” Sax says. “Food is huge right now.” He associates this trend with a growing interest among young secular Jews in exploring their roots, especially in North America. “It’s sort of a secular ba’al teshuva [return to religion] movement,” he muses. “Food can’t replace the synagogue, but it is about young people rediscovering their identities and making a cultural connection.”
Sax points to the growing number of young Jewish food bloggers and writers, and jokes that these days, “Jewish parents won’t hang themselves if their kid becomes a chef.”
Cohen agrees about the power that food has to connect young Jews – both to their own community and to others. The most important thing he learned on his falafel-fueled adventure, he says, was that “we underestimate the importance of food to understand ourselves and other people.”


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