In search of the endangered deli

In Search of the Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen

By David Sax

McClelland & Stewart, 314 pages, $33

WHEN Simon's on Main Street closed down in early 2000, Winnipeg's North End lost its last authentic delicatessen and an irreplaceable piece of its storied Jewish heritage.

The deli wasn't just a sandwich counter. It was a restaurant that prepared and served a specific form of Jewish cuisine that was born in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, perfected in New York City and then propagated across the continent.

Wherever Jews went, delicatessens sprouted up, serving Eastern European soul food such as chicken soup with matzo balls, gefilte fish, cabbage rolls, stuffed kishke, knishes and a variety of house-cured meats, most notably pastrami, corned beef and pickled tongue.

But over the past few decades, old-school delicatessens have been disappearing for a multitude of reasons, including high rents in big-city downtown neighbourhoods, the migration of Jews to newer suburbs, the aversion to fat spawned by a variety of faddish health-food crazes and, most bizarrely, the growing popularity of southern barbecue, which has driven up the cost of brisket, a formerly cheap cut of meat that deli masters transform into pastrami, corned beef and Montreal smoked meat.

Toronto-born food writer David Sax never made it to Simon's. But he has witnessed the decline of the deli scene in dozens of cities across North America and Eastern Europe.

In Save The Deli, a bittersweet culinary travelogue, the Brooklyn-based Sax tries to hit all the authentic delis still standing in New York City, where even landmark delis are threatened by rising costs, before setting out on an 18-month journey to see whether the Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine has a future anywhere else.

Sax's journey is somewhat depressing, as he documents how corporate "deli" chains thrive by serving soulless, machine-injected corned beef while mom 'n' pop purveyors strive to make ends meet.

But he also encounters success stories in Los Angeles, where the largely secular Jewish community treats delis like community institutions, and Montreal, where low inner-city rent has allowed smoked-meat temples such as Schwartz's to survive.

The travelogue is a little choppy, as some sections read like blog entries. But Sax has done his research and engages in enough analysis to explain why deli is important to not just Jews, but western culture as a whole.

Ultimately, Save The Deli will make you crave house-cured, smoked, steamed and finally hand-cut pastrami -- and curse the demographic changes that have caused this delicacy to disappear.

Bartley Kives is a Free Press

reporter with a deli obsession of his own.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 H8