“Call me Ishmael,” declares one of the most famous opening sentences in Western literature. But what if the narrator of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” was actually asking you to call him? That was the whimsical thought Logan Smalley offered in a spirited bar conversation about notable first sentences. He jotted the notion down on a…
It was the humble cupcake that set David Sax on a years-long quest to explore how food trends emerge, evolve, and explode — often at warp speed. “The cupcake was the food trend that kicked off the 21st century,” he told the Forward. “It was the first food trend to grow up on the internet,…
There are a handful of New York City landmarks that most people recognize: Lady Liberty. The Chrysler Building. And Katz’s Delicatessen. Opened on the Lower East Side in 1888 and purchased by the Russian Katz family in 1903, the delicatessen famous for its orgasmic pastrami sandwiches, its Friday evening frankfurters ‘n’ beans and its Cel-Ray…
Just days before his kosher delicatessen, Ben & Izzy’s, opened for business in Toronto in April, Dino Venasio pulled a giant smoked brisket from his steamer and laid it on the cutting board. As vapors laden with garlic, coriander, cloves, fennel and half a dozen other spices blanketed the small space, Venasio began slicing methodically,…
If ready-made and microwavable meals were the novelty foods of the ’90s, “back to basics” is the motto of the 2010s. Twenty-somethings across the country are rolling up their sleeves and joining their grandparents in their kitchens, learning to make the dishes their bubbes and zeydes were raised on — in some cases, recipes they…
Ask Google about the Jewish food history of Toronto and you’ll get nothing. Ask author/storyteller Michael Wex about Toronto Jewish food history and he’ll talk about immigrants, Sabbath observance, and cholent. With a population of nearly 2.5 million people, half of whom were born outside Canada, Toronto is the most multicultural city in North America,…
“The loss is unfathomable,” said “Save The Deli” author David Sax. He was despairing over the closure of New York’s famed Stage Deli, which happened last night at midnight. The 75-year-old Midtown landmark located just a couple of blocks from Carnegie Hall (and from its rival, the Carnegie Deli) still has its website — with…
It may be hard to believe that for some bagel lovers, New York bagels are not the be all and end all. Not everyone may know it, but Montreal is a big bagel town, too. And now some U.S. cities — New York, included — are serving Montreal bagels on their turf. “My folks are…
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