[Sca-cooks] OT/OOP NYT Article on Math Formula For the PerfectBacon Sandwich...
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Sun Apr 22 09:03:09 PDT 2007
On Apr 22, 2007, at 9:51 AM, Nick Sasso wrote:
> By default, I assume anything dealing with a deli or pastrami on
> rye to be
> oringinated in New York City somewhere.
Well, I'd think nothing is ever a done deal without evidence, but
there's a good chance of it. I remember being surprised to discover
that Texas has been pretty well stocked with Germans for quite a long
time, but I hadn't known there were many Jewish people (Kinky
Friedman notwithstanding).
As I said, it's the Katz's in Houston which is advertising itself as
a New-York-style Kosher deli, and not the Katz's on Houston and
Second Avenue advertising itself as a real Houston-style deli, which
at least suggests something about origins.
But I do think that the concept of the Kosher delicatessen (which is
distinct from a German delikatessen, or what we now call an Italian
delicatessen, which is really a salumeria, an Italian charcuterie,
more or less, in that these are more like shops and a Kosher deli
tends to be more like a restaurant) was probably designed to
accomodate the late-19th-century wave of Jewish immigration to the
US, much of which ended up (if only temporarily) in the Lower East
Side of Manhattan, centered roughly between East Broadway and Houston
Streets, East of the Bowery. I believe this is essentially the
spawning-ground of the Kosher deli.
There are others which probably sprouted either around the periphery
of the midtown theater district, or unabashedly inside it, perhaps to
accommodate the great number of Jews in various theatrical trades.
This can tend to combine healthy appetites with late-night schedules,
hence places like the Carnegie Deli, Sarge's, the Stage Deli, and the
venerable Lindy's, now known mostly for its cheesecake recipe, but
once an extremely popular Jewish-but-not-especially-Kosher deli
restaurant, and immortalized as Mindy's Restaurant in the stories of
Damon Runyon.
Junior's, of Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, might be placed in this
category, and has many partisans who swear by it (mostly people who
regard "Brooklyn" as a religious denomination), but to me it's just a
diner with a very slight Kosher-deli flare, and known mostly for a
fairly good cheesecake which has unfairly assumed the mantle of
Lindy's, now that Lindy's is no more. We're talking about a
spongecake (!), and not a murbteig-variant pastry, base, and a measly
2.5 inches high. Heretical fruit toppings. Chocolate. Pfeh! I'm not
impressed. They're decent cakes, but not what a New York cheesecake
oughtta be...
Adamantius
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils mangent de la
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
"Confessions", 1782
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
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