The Insiders' Guide to St. Barths: NYC

OK, so this isn't about dining. But it's about eating in NYC. Glad to see Frank Bruni is on the case. It's baaack! Shame about the not on 2nd Ave location. Also, no one ordered kishka? What's up with that?

February 13, 2008
Quit Kibitzing and Pass the Gribenes

By FRANK BRUNI
IN time, we’d get to the pastrami sandwich, and we’d quibble over its height and quarrel about condiments. Condiments are personal.

But first came the matzo ball soup and the chopped liver.

Already, consensus eluded us.

Ed deemed the entire soup good, while Nora reserved her praise for the perfectly round, snowy matzo ball itself.

But Laura couldn’t get on board with any of it. She found the soup too salty, the ball too weighty.

Ed liked the liver well enough, while Nora thought it should be chunkier, like the liver at her beloved Barney Greengrass.

Laura had a broader plaint. She grouped restaurant chopped liver with store-bought birthday cake: inherent failures. “They have to be made at home,” she said.

Nora said: “That is so untrue! My grandmother’s chopped liver and the chopped liver at Barney Greengrass are on a par with each other. I’m not kidding.”

We were at the Second Avenue Deli, newly reopened and newly misnamed, since it’s now on East 33rd Street near Third Avenue.

But its location doesn’t matter. What does is that after a two-year absence it’s back, rejoining Katz’s and the Carnegie among a handful of old-timers devoted to Jewish deli food, which isn’t just about eating.

It’s about tradition, nostalgia and (my favorite part) the sport of friendly bickering over what’s orthodox, what’s not, whether there’s room in this short life for lean sandwich meat and who has the best tongue in town.

So for lunch there recently I recruited three latke-loving New Yorkers with appetites and opinions: Ed Koch, the former mayor; Nora Ephron, the writer and movie director; and Laura Shapiro, the author of several books about culinary history.

The Second Avenue Deli we visited is about half the size of the East Village original, which lasted from 1954 to early 2006, when it was done in by rising rents.

A nephew of the original owner is in charge, and he’s made changes, but not too many.

He’s added smoked fish appetizers. On every table sits a free bowl of gribenes, chicken skin fried in chicken fat. In the past you had to ask for it. Now you just have to atone for it.

The restaurant remains kosher, unlike Katz’s and the Carnegie, and still prides itself on cooking as well as sandwich making, a vanity supported by the meaty kreplach and the chicken soup, brimming with fresh dill, that I had at a later lunch.

But Ed, Nora, Laura and I focused instead on the foods that each of us associated most closely with the Second Avenue Deli.

“It had a great hot dog,” Nora said of its East Village incarnation, “with a major skin thing happening, and a burst of juicy meat inside.”

She had a dreamy look. When the waiter swung by, she asked: “What’s the hot dog situation?”

The waiter said flatly, “We have them.”

She pressed for details.

“It’s not skinless,” he said, “so it gives a nice crackle.”

Her eyes widened. “This is very exciting!” she said. “You’re saying the right words! You’re singing the song!”

After two bites of it, she judged the texture ideal, the seasoning less so. “I’m looking for more garlic,” she said. “I’m looking for more, more, more courage in this hot dog.”

The brisket was a bigger hit, especially with me and even more so with Ed, who homed in on its transcendent virtue.

“I happen to like fatty delicatessen,” he said as he bit into the fatty, messy sandwich, which he washed down with Cel-Ray soda. He had made a bib of his napkin, and wore it over his blue dress shirt and gold-striped tie.

“I will order the fattiest pastrami they make,” he said of his approach to deli food, and I nodded. I saw Nora and Laura nodding too. On this we agreed: life was too short to go any other route.

Our pastrami — on rye — turned out to be plenty fatty. It was borscht red. It glistened.

The machine-carved meat was also stacked very tall, which troubled Nora.

“One of the reasons I like Barney Greengrass so much is that they don’t overload the sandwich like this,” she said. “This is veering into Carnegie country.”

“I grew up poor,” said Ed. “I like overloading.”

“See how many schools of thought there are when it comes to delicatessen?” Nora said. “It’s like a religion, and it has sects.”

Both Ed and Nora swooned over the meat itself, tender and smoky. Nora expressed relief, saying that a few years ago she’d had a pastrami sandwich at the Second Avenue Deli that “tasted like steamed rubber bands.”

Laura said that it could be spicier. “The mustard brings everything out,” she said, “so maybe that’s O.K. But if you’re a purist you want to eat it plain.”

“No, no, no!” said Nora. “A purist eats a pastrami sandwich on rye with mustard.” She was adamant. I was ashamed. Should I confess that I, too, wasn’t much for mustard?

I was saved by the latke, whose arrival shut down conversation about all else. It was scary: bigger than my foot, with an inside like cold mashed potatoes.

“It’s a school of latke,” Nora shrugged. “The hockey-puck school.”

“This is shocking,” said Laura. “Shocking.”

“You’re going with ‘shocking,’ Laura?” Nora teased, then wondered if there was rice pudding for dessert.

Nope. There was chocolate rugelach, which Nora said wasn’t quite as good as the raisin rugelach at Zabar’s.

Laura mentioned something about a deli near Boston, where she grew up. Ed flashed back to corned beef and knishes from the different boroughs and decades in his life.

And I realized that we weren’t so much eating in a specific restaurant as passing through a communal storehouse of memories, on a bridge of babkas from the past to the future.

Ed, the most deeply rooted New Yorker among us, said that at the Second Avenue Deli, “I feel very much at home.”

“I walk out,” he said, “and I feel warm, no matter how cold it is.”

Second Avenue Deli

*

162 East 33rd Street.; (212) 689-9000.

ATMOSPHERE Beyond a Hebrew-letter-style sign and long deli case lie bright, tightly packed dining areas.

SOUND LEVEL Considerable.

RECOMMENDED DISHES Matzo brei, coleslaw, potato salad, chicken soup, blintzes, pastrami on rye, brisket on rye, roast turkey sandwich, kreplach, rugelach.

WINE LIST About a dozen kosher wines plus, for the first time, a full bar.

PRICE RANGE Lunch and dinner appetizers, $5.95 to $13.50; sandwiches and main courses, $9.95 to $32.95; side dishes, $.95 to $6.95; desserts, $3.95 to $7.95. Breakfast dishes, $4.95 to $23.50.

HOURS From 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday to Thursday, to 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

RESERVATIONS Not accepted.

CREDIT CARDS All major.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Slight ramp to entrance; restaurant and accessible restroom on one level.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.