Delicatessens - Paradise Lost, Paradise Found
In the New York area, where I grew up, the corner delicatessen was a fixed cultural icon. You looked in the front window onto a griddle, usually covered in tinfoil, on which a row of hot dogs, a tub of sauerkraut and some potato knishes were kept warm. A partially sliced turkey sat surrounded by large jars of red and green pickled cherry peppers. Salamis and bolognas hung from the ceiling. Entering, you walked past a deli case, filled with cold brisket, beef tongue, chopped liver, whitefish, herring and lox, cole slaw and potato salad, sour pickles and bright green half-sours. As soon as you sat down, the waiter, usually a grouchy old man, brought menus and a bowl of mixed pickles.My family ate in delis regularly, often meeting their friends there. Every day of my senior year of high school, my friend Alan Shore and I stopped into a deli, bought hot dogs and cream sodas and argued politics with the owner.
Later on, I worked in delicatessens. I learned to slice lox in a deli on 13th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan using a 14-inch flexible blade sharp enough to shave with. The mavens, of course, all requested “the old guy” for their lox. He could cut nearly transparent slices, a quarter-inch thick from one end to the other. I lost the tip of my thumb in a slicer accident at that deli, so when I say that I have contributed blood, sweat and tears to the delicatessen trade, it is no metaphor.
The great delis have largely passed into history. The Second Avenue Deli is gone. Katz’s, on the Lower East Side, is now best known as the setting for Meg Ryan’s famous scene in “When Harry Met Sally.” The Carnegie Deli has become very nearly a parody of itself; the last time we ate there my wife was served a matzo ball soup with a single matzo ball the size of a softball. Perhaps this is the way it should be. Delicatessen has passed into the American culture like a seam of ore running through the layers of European, Asian, indigenous and regional cuisines that make up our national diet. Every supermarket now sells corned beef and every sub shop seems to have pastrami subs on the menu. Bagels are now as American as pizza or barbecue.
Searching for deli counters in the Pioneer Valley, you hear about the great delis of Springfield that are no more. In Northampton, THE GROCERY, which brought in pastrami, corned beef and other delicacies from New York, has been gone for 15 years.
But deli food is still available. STOP & SHOP sells decent potato knishes and a line of good half-sour pickles. HENION BAKERY in Amherst gets full marks for baking corned rye bread, but it is not as dense or as sour as the bread on which I grew up. CUSHMAN MARKET AND CAFE in North Amherst used to have amazing potato knishes, but can no longer get them. The store still serves salami and eggs, a real home-style treat: an omelet filled with slices of fried salami. COSTCO, in West Springfield, has Hebrew National hot dogs and hot sauerkraut at its lunch counter. Even the MULLINS CENTER at the University of Massachusetts serves Nathan’s hot dogs — the Coney Island staple — with sauerkraut.
If you are in search of good, reasonably authentic delicatessen, there are two places to go. Each is a restaurant where you can find good pastrami, corned beef, chopped liver, blintzes and a bowl of mixed pickles. That there are other, nontraditional foods on the menus might bother some, but not me. Life goes on, things change, and you take your pleasures where you can.
If you are in downtown Springfield, try GUS AND PAUL’S, a delicatessen at 1209 Sumner Avenue. [The Tower Square location in downtown closed last year.] I have not visited the Sumner Avenue location, but I [used to stop] by the downtown place pretty regularly. Despite being located in a high-rise, it echoe[d] the traditional layout and boast[ed] a large counter of baked goods as well as a meat counter, not all of which [was] traditional deli. I’m never downtown with a cooler, so I usually [ate] rather than shop[ed] there.
REIN’S DELICATESSEN, on 25 Park Ave. in West Springfield, is an outpost of a popular Vernon, Conn., deli. It is large and authentic and if you are visiting the movies or shopping on Riverdale Road, eschew the chains and take the Route 20/Park Street exit just past the Yale Genton clothing store. Rein’s is halfway around the rotary. The meat counter will bring tears to the eye. Actually, it will make you hungry, even if you have just eaten. Corned beef, pastrami, tongue, salami, bologna, chopped liver, fruit salad and more fill the case. Around the corner in the fish case, Nova and the saltier “belly” lox, sable and whitefish nestle with creamed herrings and fish salads. This is better than a museum — you can take some of this home with you. And I recommend that you do.
I’ve made my own corned beef for sandwiches at home. It’s pretty easy to do. Simmer a corned beef with half a box of pickling spice, eight or nine cloves of garlic, some allspice berries and peppercorns, and a couple of dried hot peppers. After a gentle simmer for an hour or two, the meat will be ready to be sliced and laid on fresh rye bread with some spicy deli mustard.
I have recipes for pastrami and its Montreal cousin, spiced beef, but they all involve two weeks of brining and three hours of 190-degree smoke so usually I buy my pastrami when I can. New York hot dog vendors serve their dogs with warm sauerkraut or red onions, chunks of Spanish onions in a reddish liquid that I have been trying for years to replicate.
Here are some recipes for delicatessen-inspired foods. Enjoy.
Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 23, 2007