Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Reading about all these delis is making me hungry. But for me delis are about something more than food: they're about nostalgia. Normally, I find all nostalgia corrosive and to be avoided, but nostalia for the deli is irresistable and not all that bad for you--like a pastrami sandwich once every other month: it won't kill you. So, to indulge... Ed's recent musings about delis past reminded me of the Strathmore Deli on Northern Blvd (I think) in Manhasset on Long Island. My parents liked it because they knew the owner who had worked (or partly owned?) the Turnpike Deli in Forrest Hills (which was a GREAT deli). The owner (I wish I could remember his name) was married to the woman who worked the cash register. There were numbers on her arms. "From the camps," my parents informed me quietly. At the time, it didn't seem out-of-the-ordinary for me to meet a Holocaust survivor. This was the Sixties and WWII was more recent history for my teenage self than the War in Vietnam is for today's young people. ...These are odd images to indulge when discussing delis, but my memories do point to the uniquely Jewish (and perhaps vanishing) sense of community one felt in a local deli when I was growing up. Everything felt famliar and family-like...in the good and bad sense of those phrases. I loved the food, of course, but the experience of going to the deli, was about much more than food. But honestly, I could go on for hours (or paragraphs)...so intense are the memories evoked by Ed's piece.