Deli Man – Film Screening & Discussion

For some, delicatessen food is close to a religious experience: A tender, crumbling cut of corned beef steeped in its juices, a full-bodied garlic dill pickle, spicy brown mustard with grain. Recipes and culinary garnishes from Hungary, Poland, Russia, Romania that flowed into late 19th and early 20th century America soon became part of an American culinary vernacular – Deli.

Deli Man follows the effusive and charming Ziggy Gruber, a third-generation delicatessen man, owner and maven (as well as a Yiddish-speaking French trained chef) who currently operates one of the country’s top delis, Kenny and Ziggy’s in Houston. Kenny and Ziggy’s has been touted in press reviews ranging from “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” to the L.A. Daily News.

The story of the American deli is the story of Jews – their immigration, migration, upward mobility, and western assimilation. Although New York may be the most populous, celebrated and redolent Jewish node, substantial Jewish tides also flowed from Chicago to Detroit, San Francisco to L.A., and Galveston to Houston and Dallas. How this burgeoning tribe moved and thrived from city to suburb and from suburb to strip mall, and in the process created a legacy and new generations of wealth, is the sunny topside of the Jewish-American journey. The shadowy understory is how that very success engendered the deterioration of the old, traditional urban block and neighborhood – the epic synagogues, Mom and Pop storefronts, and nucleus of Jewish cultural life at which deli was the succulent heart.

Email lbell@azjhs.org to RSVP.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from Arizona Humanities.