More About Those Meat Hooks

I've still to photographically document the Moyers' Pork signage over Benuel Kauffman's Lancaster County Produce stall, but here are a few other original signposts/meat hook apparatus spotted at the Reading Terminal Market yesterday.

The meat hooks are largely gone but Kamal Barouki has kept the signboards
above Kamal's Middle Eastern Specialties as an integral part of the stall.
Note the stall numbers.

Over at L. Halteman Family the otherwise unadorned signboards are
painted baby pink and baby blue, but the hooks are put to good use as
shopping bag dispensers and apron hooks. They also serve to store spare
fluorescent light bulbs.

Hershel's East Side Deli uses the old meat hooks for hanging up cooking equipment.

POTUS @ RTM

White House Photo/Pete Souza

President Barack Obama fit in a quick, under 15-minute visit to the Reading Terminal Market Monday, including a meet and greet with Golden Bowl owner Sun Mun, who was snapped with him by stall worker Kwok Wong.

Steinke, who usually takes off on Mondays after working weekends, got the call from his office at about 3:50 p.m. that the President would be making the stop before his fund-raising appearance on behalf of Senate candidate Joe Sestak. Steinke quickly donned his suit and rushed in from his West Philly abode, just in time for the photo at right (courtesy of Bassetts Ice Cream) with Obama and, at right, Steve Safron of Hershel's East Side Deli.

In his 4:30-4:45 p.m. visit, the President grabbed an ice cream cone at Bassetts (mint chocolate chip), a cheese steak at Carmen's and four apples from the Fair Food Farmstand, all along the market's Avenue A, the aisle closest to 12th Street. The Secret Service narrowed the President's visit to that small area of the market to provide better security.

Although market personnel weren't alerted to the visit until about 45 minutes beforehand, Secret Service and White House staff had been casing the RTM the previous week, so the stop was no spur-of-the-moment cheese steak fix.

Latkes Lesson

Want to make potato pancakes (latkes) like those served by Hershel's East Side Deli at the Reading Terminal Market? Andy Wash, co-owner of the deli, provides his recipe and secrets at the Cheftalk website. (Don't pay any attention to the writer referring to Andy as Andy "Washington". The writer mistook his notes with Andy's last name as an abbrevation.)

Save the Deli!

I'm only about a quarter into this book dedicated to the Jewish deli, but it is fascinating. Although author David Sax may have omitted reference to your favorite deli, anyone who enjoys a good pastrami sandwich or plate of kishke will say a b'rucha for this book.

I purchased the book last Tuesday at a signing in connection with Sax's appearance in the Free Library of Philadelphia's author series. Coincidentally, Tuesday was National Sandwich Day, the birthday of John Montague, reputed to be the inventor of the sandwich. (A blatant lie.)

In his talk, Sax outlined the two primary reasons why the Jewish deli is in such serious decline (from a couple thousand in the early part of the century in New York City to maybe a couple hundred today).

The first reason is simple economics. The traditional foods served by the deli have very high material costs. The margin on that $9 or $14 pastrami sandwich will be a buck at best. Add in high rents (especially in Manhattan) and labor costs and you've got a business challenge of the first order.

The second reason -- and the one Sax spent most of his time discussing -- is culture. He quickly touched on a variety of cultural reasons for the deli's decline (generational change, changes in food tastes, etc.), but I found one particularly interesting: No homeland for keeping the tradition alive. For example, the reason why Italian restaurants are still going strong, even though changes in U.S. immigration law largely shut off the Italians as much as the Jews in 1920, is that there is still an Italy with a thriving, evolving food culture. Same goes for the various Asian cuisines and just about any other ethnic cuisine you can think of. Not so Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine: the Holocaust wiped out the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe and, with it, the natural homeland of their cookery.

That's not true of the style of Jewish cuisine that has most recently taken root and thrived in America, Israeli/Middle Eastern cooking. Falafel stands are ubiquitous, as Israelis migrate to the U.S. and open restaurants offering their home cooking, as reinterpreted here in America. Because there is an Israel with its own cooking traditions (albeit, adapted from Arabic cultures, just as Ashkenazi cooking adapted from Polish, Germany, French and other european cultures), there is a living base from which to grow.

In his Philadelphia talk, Sax offered a number of possible solutions -- including his belief that delis should eschew buying finished corned beer and pastrami from the large processors, like Hebrew National (a unit of Conagra), and instead cure their own meats and make everything they can on premises. Since he was speaking in Philadelphia, he singled at Hershel's East Side Deli in the Reading Terminal Market as a fine example. (That's where he lunched.)

Sax is definitely going to be a big hit at all the pre-Hanukah Jewish Book Fairs around North America. The fact that he's from Toronto and has a passion for Montreal smoked meat, you shouldn't against him hold.

David's web site: Save the Deli

Save the Deli

There will be a bit of show and tell when author David Sax visits the Free Public Library Tuesday evening to promote his book, Save the Deli. A couple of local delis will be providing noshes, including pastrami of Hershel's Deli of the Reading Terminal Market. The program is free and begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 19th and Vine.