Shiva for the Stage Deli

Beco

I'm Not Your Guru
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Shiva for the Stage Deli
By David Sax

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.

Oh sure, in her later years she was easily dismissed as tired, failing, cranky, and limping along. Just a mere hint of her former greatness remained visible through the accumulated knickknacks and tchotchkes, and her telltale shtick. Once the talk of the town, now just seemed warmed over and rehashed for the tourist throngs, like a day old slice of salami repurposed into an omelet. They’ll say it hadn’t been the same for years, or even decades, and that her time was past, but they know in their hearts that even at this age, she was taken from us too soon.

Yes, there were older delicatessens, and bigger delicatessens, and, many will argue, better delicatessens than the Stage in its most recent incarnation. But there are few Jewish delis in America that were as influential to the evolution of the deli’s culture than the Stage. It was the deli that many others took their cues from, the deli that made the food famous, the place that Americanized the Jewish delicatessen.

The Stage was founded by Max Asnas, a Russian Jewish immigrant with a gravelly Yiddish accent, a wide belly, and a gift for gab. With his prime location near the Broadway strip, Asnas catered to celebrities and schmoozed like no other. He hung their pictures, promoted their plays, and worked the room with a shameless efficiency. Sure, many of these celebrities were Yiddish speaking Jews, like Mel Brooks, Milton Berle, or Carl Reiner, but many weren’t, and Asnas cultivated an environment where the Jewish deli became just another American institution to them, with matzo ball soup as comforting and familiar as Campbell’s cream of tomato.

At one point in the early 1960’s, someone decided it was a good idea to strap a microphone on Asnas, and record him walking around the deli chatting up customers. It was edited into an album called “The Corned Beef Confucius,” and it perfectly captures the Stage at its peak. “For this record to have the proper flavor, you have to rub a little corned beef fat on top,” recommends one customer, while Jack Leonard, the comedian insists it really needs “those little gree-bee-knees [gribines], you know, those little Jewish popcorn.” Assimilation wasn’t just accepted at the Stage, it was sought after. The deli epitomized an era when Jewish culture, comedy, and flavor was making fantastic inroads into American society. On the recording, Asnas recalls an old women walking in and asking if the Stage was a kosher deli. “You’re Jewish,” she told Asnas. “For the ham, I have a gentile who slices and sells it,” Asnas replied to her, and when she asked where his accent came from, he insisted he’d picked it up from the customers.

The Stage brought the deli world the wall of celebrity photos, the association with Broadway shows, and the gigantic sandwich. Its sandwich war with its neighbor, and longtime rival the Carnegie Deli, came to a head in the late 1980’s, but only after a decade or so of cold war style arms races, measured in ounces of pastrami and corned beef, so that the fight for bragging rights brought us to a point where six inch-high sandwiches are the expected norm in Jewish delis.
 
That's too bad...

A really good Jewish Delicatessen is hard to find these days :(
 
A loss of a deli, is a sad thing. We had a die off in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. It was much sadder with the loss of bakeries.

"What is this thing ? This is not a bagel!"
 
A loss of a deli, is a sad thing. We had a die off in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. It was much sadder with the loss of bakeries.

"What is this thing ? This is not a bagel!"

Agreed.

The great bakery die off forced me to make my own.

Without the starter.

It's been bleak.
 
You have my sympathy. I tried, too. Several times. Wrong flour? Wrong starter ? *sigh*
 
Don't get me started, about starters- I thought about buying a second fridge, when I was playing with them.
 
Don't get me started, about starters- I thought about buying a second fridge, when I was playing with them.

You understand and that's awesome.

I just wish my 4th great grandmother had the forethought to keep that starter alive.

At least she passed down the recipes.
 
Oh, man! That is another thing that Global Climate change will kill- wild cultures. *sigh*
(Here, I was hoping that the old recipes could be revived by finding the starter in the wild.)
 
Oh, man! That is another thing that Global Climate change will kill- wild cultures. *sigh*
(Here, I was hoping that the old recipes could be revived by finding the starter in the wild.)

It's my understanding that bread starters must be cultivated and each generation evolves into more flavor (deeper, richer).

What is this "wild culture" of which you speak?
 
It's a living thing, right ? It had to start somewhere. It was domesticated, and tamed into what was desired.

And it resulted in something that I had- the perfect bagel experience.

I was hoping that wild yeast culture could be identified (We have the science, now!)
 
It's a living thing, right ? It had to start somewhere. It was domesticated, and tamed into what was desired.

And it resulted in something that I had- the perfect bagel experience.

I was hoping that wild yeast culture could be identified (We have the science, now!)

Over my head, for sure.

As long as it isn't irradiated or fabricated, I await a taste.
 
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