The odds are pretty good that, if you haven’t been to New York City, you’ve never had great Jewish deli food. There are definitely pockets of it here and there, in Florida and California, sure. But the old world feel and the food that came from those traditions—the traditions themselves, some of them unbroken for over a century—those live in New York.
There are a few different forks to that cuisine and today we’re talking about Delis. Delicatessens; places where a person can purchase ready-made foods to take home or eat on the spot. That definition has loosened a lot to encompass any place that serves a corned beef sandwich. And we aren’t splitting hairs here; we say “Jewish Deli,” but we mean the places serving that heart-attack-inducing meat and rye and mustard and pickles goodness. Plus we’ve got the appetizing stuff on here, too: bagels, lox, etc. Mind you: these aren’t bagel places–that’s a different animal. Ditto Israeli food—a completely different thing. No, these are places where you can get traditionally Jewish cuisine, which is really, actually just Eastern European cuisine filtered through the American experience.
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