The Birth and Legacy of the Jewish Deli (February/March 2002 | Volume: 53, Issue: 1)

The Birth and Legacy of the Jewish Deli

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Authors: Patricia Volk

Historic Era: Era 6: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

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February/March 2002 | Volume 53, Issue 1

The great immigration of the late-nineteenth century brought unheard-of things to America: Tin Pan Alley, Bakelite, the first air-conditioned hat. And thanks to Sussman Volk, pastrami. In 1887, a not-great year for Jews in Vilna, my great-grandfather packed up his wife and seven children and headed for New York. He had nine fingers, having shot one off to avoid the Russian draft.

In Vilna, Sussman was a miller. But New York didn’t need millers. So, he became a tinker, mending pots and pans and selling them off his back. On the road, he would sleep in the stables of the people he sold pots to. While praying one morning in New Rochelle, he was kicked by a horse, which made him tear his hair and shout, “My life lacks dignity!”

Being a religious man, Reb Sussman knew the kosher way to butcher meat. He opened a tiny shop at 86½ Delancey Street in New York City. The first week, a Rumanian stopped by and asked if he could store a trunk in the cellar. “I’m just going back for a few years,” he said.

“If I let you store your trunk in my cellar,” Reb Sussman bargained, “what will you give me?”

“If you let me store my trunk in your cellar, I will give you the recipe for pastrami.”

Great-grandpa took the trunk and the recipe and began selling chunks of pastrami over the counter. Soon he was selling it by the slice. Then between two pieces of bread. Since the application of mustard to a pastrami sandwich should be done at the last possible moment so the mustard doesn’t get hot and sink into the rye (which should be soft but never gummy), after school all seven of Reb Sussman’s children worked in the store making toodles. A toodle is a little square of wax paper rolled into a cone with a dollop of mustard in it—a precursor to the stingy plastic mustard bags you tear open with your teeth on airplanes. With a toodle, you could take a pastrami sandwich to work in the morning and lay a squiggle of fresh mustard on it at lunch.

 
 

Reb Sussman’s pastrami sandwiches took off. He moved from 86 ½ Delancey Street to 88 Delancey Street. Here he had room to put in tables and chairs. Overnight, Sussman Volk’s was no longer just a butcher’s. You could sit there and eat. It was 1888. The first New York deli was born. (Around this time, according to family lore, Sussman’s son Albert, working independently, became the first man to stir scallions into cream cheese.)

In the twentieth century, as the diaspora headed south and west, other delis were not far behind. Nate ‘n’ Al has been in Los Angeles since Joan Crawford ran a restaurant in Mildred Pierce. Wolfie’s, a founder of the Early Bird Special, and now the Super