My favorite deli/delis of my youth
Ben’s Kosher Deli in Greenvale (Long Island)
When I give talks on the history of the Jewish deli, I’m inevitably asked what my favorite deli is.
I often sidestep the question for a number of reasons:
1) I’m an historian, so the delis that matter the most to me are the legendary ones from the past, the ones I’ve only heard stories about, like Grabstein’s and the Hy Tulip in Brooklyn, Reuben’s and Lindy’s in Manhattan, and Schweller’s in the Bronx.
2) I interviewed a lot of deli owners for my book, and for those who are still around, I wouldn’t want to play favorites and offend them if I don’t say they’re the best; and
3) I’ve kept kosher for my entire adult life after college--although I’m a bit more flexible these days--so my experience of eating in non-kosher delis is much more limited than of eating in kosher ones.
That said, I did grow up going to a few delis that I’m nostalgic about. One was Squire’s, which was on Middle Neck Road in my hometown of Great Neck, Long Island. When we ate in, I always ordered the open-face roast beef sandwich--I loved how the one piece of rye bread soaked up a puddle of gravy. Also, we took out sometimes from Kensington Kosher Deli (also on Middle Neck Road, but closer to the train station—it still exists, and the hot dogs and potato knishes can’t be beat).
But it was Ben’s Kosher Deli in Greenvale, where we went to celebrate Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and my grandparents’ anniversaries; I remember it being very airy and filled with very animated Jewish customers who were my parents’ and grandparents’ ages but always seemed somehow “more Jewish” than my very secular family that had very little connection to the organized Jewish community. At some point we also started celebrating milestones at Deli King in the Lake Success Shopping Center; the owner, Eric Newman, is now—or was already—a partner in Pastrami Queen in Manhattan.
I also have very fond memories of going to the 2nd Avenue Deli in Manhattan for lunch or dinner on days that we went to matinees on or off-Broadway.
One deli that just closed that I already miss dearly is the Ben’s Kosher Deli in Manhattan, which has been my regular pre-theater haunt for decades. Its proximity to the theaters, its reasonable prices (compared to almost any other restaurant in the area except perhaps an Asian one or two), it’s lighthearted décor that mixed influences from Art Deco and Chagall--and the fact that it was open on the Sabbath (I will discuss kosher delis that are open on the Sabbath in another blog post) made it ideal.
Now that it’s been taken over by the glatt kosher Mr. Broadway restaurant, it’s closed on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, the prices have been jacked up, and—perhaps this is temporary—the décor has gone a little wild; I stopped in the other day and there was an oil painting of a rabbi in long flowing robes sitting on the floor—the painting, not the rabbi--against one of the walls, looking like it was waiting to be auctioned off. It didn’t seem to have a connection to anything.
I guess if you’re going for nostalgia, sometimes pretty much anything will do.
P.S. If you still really want to know my favorite deli, I guess that now it’s the Ben’s Kosher Deli in Boca Raton, which I go to every time my wife and I are in Boynton Beach visiting her mother.
P.P.S. I never went to Artie’s, the deli that’s pictured here, even though it was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for 18 years, from 1999 to 2017. But it wasn’t kosher, and that’s why I never went. I also moved out of the neighborhood in the late 1990s.
