“Once this whole thing is over,” my father declared, early in January, “one of the first places we have to go is to Sammy’s!”
Since that glorious day in history, when a Krakow baker boiled that first rope of dough, our people have argued about what makes the perfect bagel.
Deli devotees are returning the Jewish eatery to its roots. Until now, none of them have been kosher. David Sax explains why that’s finally changing.
After 75 years in business, New York’s Stage Delicatessen announced its closure today. For a deli world already used to deaths and disappearances, having seen thousands of landmarks wiped clean from our palate over the past decades, the end of the Stage plunges deep into the heart of deli lovers. The magnitude of its loss is incalculable. The significance is simply staggering.
Unlike most of my friends, my parents didn’t inherit a lot of Jewish food traditions from my grandparents. My mother’s family had been in Canada for so many generations that they ate like WASPs. She grew up with roast beef dinners washed down with a glass of milk, and her mother’s cooking, which I experienced on visits to Montreal, was more a source of comedy than comfort.
Younger generations of Jews will keep taking care of communal business, writes David Sax — just in ways that look a bit different from their parents’.