It was a wonderful day in Chicago. It was 50 degrees and rainy with winds nearly 20mph in all directions. As I walked to the 11 City Diner, I realized that I must truly love deli since I was braving the elements to meet up with David Sax. David and I have a lot in common except for the fact that he was born in Canada, has written for countless national publications, and his scrapping good looks make him resemble a young Jewish Richard Gere. David had been on his “Save The Deli” book tour for a little over a week. He took the time to rap with me about cured meats, fads, and most importantly preserving something that has more historical significance than anything else that goes between two pieces of bread. \

So David, for some of our younger viewers out there who have grown up going to Manny’s or Kaufman’s it seemed like that was the way things always were. A handful at best of great authentic Jewish delis scattered across the landscape, and that was it. We hear stories from our parents about the great deli that used to be around the block or kiddy corner from there. Why did things change?

The scattering is a demographic thing. Back in the day people lived in tight knit neighborhoods in and around the city. Especially the Jews of Chicago, they started around Maxwell Street Market, a very dense neighborhood, and they moved out to Lawndale, which was still pretty close knit. Then they moved to west Rogers park which got more and more spread out and then out to Skokie and out to Northbrook and all these places. And in all these new neighborhoods the families got bigger houses and the neighborhood grew from a place where you could walk around the block to your local deli to having to drive upwards of ten miles to get to one. And as that happened and as people spread out, obviously the delis spread out. At downtown Maxwell street you couldn’t have a huge place, you could only have enough seating for 40 or 50 people but out in the suburbs you can have a place like “Max and Benny’s” that seats 300 and that place can do the job theoretically of ten old school delis, which is unfortunate because it is less diversity.

Why save the deli? Why not save the coffee shop or the grocery store?

The grocery store is doing ok and so is the coffee shop. The Jewish deli is really just a place where there is so few of them these days. There are some two-dozen in all of NYC today and there used to be two thousand, that’s huge!!! That’s a 90% decline. That’s tremendous! You don’t see the same thing with coffee shops or grocery stores. Listen, all family business are being affected right now but Jewish delis are being affected that much more and for me it is the one that I feel closest with. I love coffee shops, I love pizzerias, but I identify more with Jewish delis. It’s probably because one, I am Jewish and two, that’s what we grew up going to on a weekly basis. If the Chinese food restaurants were in peril, believe me I would be the first guy to the battlefield.

I love Deli. My friends love deli. What can we do to help?

(The waiter places a mammoth pastrami sandwich in front of me) As the pastrami literally gets put down in front of you, you have done at least one part, which is eat deli. Eat deli more often. Once a week, once every two weeks. And don’t just do it for the sake of going with your grandparents but go with your friends and go with a younger generation. For the real hardcores out there, start experimenting. Pickle your own corned beef; smoke your own pastrami in your own backyard. I mean if you can do BBQ, you can do deli. And I think a new generation of deli owners is just kind of coming up now, but it is going to take that new generation to make any significant change.

New generation, what do you mean?

What I really see in the new generation of deli owners and deli lovers are people who are in their twenties, thirties and early forties, like Brad Rubin here who opened the Eleven City Diner, who grew up loving this food but again saw that there is a shortage of these places and said “I am going to do this my own way and apply everything I learned in the restaurant business or what I know about sustainability and slow food and apply it to deli.” And I am seeing it in a few places and it is just the beginning of a deli revolution. But it is the very beginning of young guys opening up delis and hopefully we will see more of it.

There is a section in your book about Delis outside of the U.S.? I, like most people, never thought about getting a corned beef sandwich on foreign soil.

Most people think they can’t find deli outside of New York, let alone outside of the continent and the same population of eastern European Jews who came to Chicago, and New York and Toronto and made deli culture there went to England, and France and Belgium and made deli culture there. Even though a lot of the population was killed off in the holocaust it still survived much better than it did in Eastern Europe. In Antwerp and Brussels and Paris I ate at some great Jewish delis. And it was great there, you have the same cultural roots of this food but it is interrupted to the culinary tastes of Europe. It is not big greasy sandwiches, it is smaller portions of fine cured meats, interesting salamis made from duck fat, and it was really eye opening to see how the same food was interpreted through the eyes of other people.

Americans owe it to themselves to go and see what the other possibilities for Jewish deli are. I hate when people talk about “oh we need to move this cuisine forward” and then they go and make wasabi matzo balls or some cheap fusion trick. Jews can look inward and find inspiration within their own cuisine. There are dishes that are very much Eastern European Jewish foods that are forgotten. It’s funny, that foie gras was originally made by the Jews in Rome and really perfected by the Jews in Alsace and France. It is traditionally a Jewish food because they couldn’t afford the other good pieces of goose that people were using. When I was in Paris I had chopped liver and it had chunks of foie gras in it and it was AMAZING!!! It was insane! And it would be great to see some deli or restaurant try that here, some young Jewish chef or some one who isn’t even Jewish who is just inspired by that food. That would be really cool. There is a lot out there to be discovered there are a lot of boundaries that need to be pushed.

So lets say you are going to Deli X in town Y, how do you go about evaluating it?

Obviously if you see that outside it is some old weather beaten place, you get a bonus point but that is not a necessity. Cause there are great newer delis, but if it was able to stick around then there has to be a reason for it. And the first thing is a smell, you want to walk in and smell deli and most old school Jewish delicatessens are going to put their meat counter right when you walk in the entrance. So you walk in and the first thing you see is the white fish lined up and the meat counter right there and chopped liver and salads and the cole slaw and the gefilte fish displayed nicely.

And the owner, they can be young, they can be old, they can be Jewish, they can be gentile. I know great Arab owners of delis. I know great black owners of delis. They don’t have to be Jewish. But they certainly have to be open and present and engage with you. You certainly don’t want someone who spends all of their time in their office or at a computer.

Why is that important in terms of a deli, isn’t a good sandwich a good sandwich at the end of the day?

Because Jewish delis are family places for the people who go there, you bring your kids, you bring your grandparents, and you just want to be made to feel welcome. You don’t want to come in and have some model/actress or some snooty server fawning over you but acting sort of coy and cold, you want things to be warm; you want to be able to engage in conversation. That is what you come for… No one goes into a deli and expects to be fawned over and expects to be treated very precisely.

What does the long-term future hold in store for the Jewish Delis of the world?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t think it will ever get to the point where there wont be any, but again I see a lot of hope in the younger generations that are coming into it with a different approach. That approach is really a “food first” mentality, It is less about some nostalgic shtick and more about making this kind of food the best as possible. Most importantly, making this food from scratch, the pickling and smoking the food in store where it is possible. There is a great hope for that. And if people go and take inspiration not just from New York but from Paris and Brussels and London that would be great as well.

Here at ChicagoEatsTV.com we like to go to places that really have staying power. But right now Chicago loves celebrity chefs, and we get a lot of slack covering places that are either too well known for cranky foodies or aren’t “hip” enough with the in crowd.

Listen, comfort foods are the blue chip stocks of the food world; the high-end restaurants are the flashes in the pan. They are the hot things that are good for a couple years. But do you honestly think that in ten or fifteen years Alinea is going to be around serving foams and crystals and all these sorts of things? That’s the type of place that you go to once, you eat it, and when you are done you say, “I have eaten it, now let me go back to Manny’s.” Jewish delis and pizzerias and hot dog places and all these other great Chicago institutions, they are comforting because they are warming and filling but they are also comforting because you know it, its simple, you don’t have to wrap your head around it. Fine dining is great but you know what, it comes and goes. It relies very much on celebrity chefs and trends, and who is hot today and who is hot tomorrow and that is not a long-term thing. A restaurant like Manny’s has been around for 60 years and there are not a lot of fine dining restaurants that have been around for 60 years.

I then shed a few tears as David had just hit the nail directly on the head. As I wiped away the saltiness from my eyeballs, I managed to chow down a few more pieces of chopped liver and pastrami. We talked a bit more about delis, business, and life and then parted ways. David Sax is a man on a mission. Like few people these days, he saw a nation wide problem, and attacked it head on. Will his efforts make a difference? He doesn’t even know. But for this hungry Chicagoan, I think he has lit a fire under the Deli Revolution.

Purchase a copy of David’s Book “Save the Deli” Here

By:
Jeff Maimon