Reviving The Spirit And Schmaltz Of The Jewish Deli

By Padmananda Rama / NPR

Published March 27, 2013 at 10:04 PM PDT

This story was published more than 11 years ago.

Nick Wiseman, co-owner of DSG Delicatessen, inspects the kitchen as an employee prepares pastrami sandwiches for lunch.

Barry Koslow, chef of DSG deli, demonstrates the proper technique for rolling a matzo ball. He has updated the traditional Passover meal with ingredients such as boiled bone marrow.

Just before lunchtime people line up outside DGS Delicatessen on Connecticut Avenue in D.C's Dupont Circle. While Deli has been open for just four months, some customers say the nation's capital is overdue for a Jewish delicatessen.

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Barry Koslow worked as a chef cooking other cuisines before turning his talents to his cultural roots.

Barry Koslow shows Morning Edition host David Greene how to boil the rolled matzo balls. Koslow says he's rolled out hundreds of the starchy orbs each day during Passover.

A selection of DGS's pickled offerings, including carrots, mushrooms and egg. DGS makes all of their pickled and smoked offerings in-house.

"There's this whole movement of people wanting to make everything from scratch," Koslow says. Restaurant workers prepare their own mustard by the gallon. A batch this size is about enough to last through the weekend crowds.

DSG's signature pastrami sandwiches and pickles.

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The kitchen and front seating at DGS during lunch.

An earlier generation of deli owners, and relatives of the DGS partners, keeps watch over a to-go bag at the restaurant's walk-up counter.

Barry Koslow, grabs ingredients from the walk-in refrigerator that houses all their pickled vegetables and smoked meat. "We'll pickle anything," he says.

The finished matzo ball soup is a centerpiece of DGS's Passover meal.

Nick Wiseman, partner at DGS Delicatessen, inspects the kitchen as an employee prepares pastrami sandwiches for lunch.

Barry Koslow, chef of DGS Delicatessen, demonstrates the proper technique for rolling a matzo ball. He has updated the traditional Passover meal with ingredients such as bone marrow.

Just before lunchtime, people line up outside DGS Delicatessen on Connecticut Avenue in D.C.'s Dupont Circle. It's been open for just four months, and some customers say the nation's capital was overdue for a Jewish delicatessen.

A selection of DGS' pickled offerings, including carrots, mushrooms and egg. DGS makes all of its pickled and smoked offerings in-house.

DGS' signature pastrami sandwiches and pickles.

Koslow grabs ingredients from the walk-in refrigerator that houses all of the deli's pickled vegetables and smoked meat. "We'll pickle anything," he says.

The finished matzo ball soup is a centerpiece of DGS' Passover meal.

Reviving The Spirit And Schmaltz Of The Jewish Deli

On a recent morning, just south of Washington, D.C.'s Dupont Circle, about a dozen people are lined up outside a restaurant waiting for its lunchtime opening.

Jon and Ralph Rosenbaum are at the front of the line and are the first to be greeted by DGS Delicatessen general manager Brian Zipin, who leads them down a white tile hallway and seats them at a small table against a brick-exposed wall.

It's not the first time the two brothers have eaten at DGS, which calls itself a modern Jewish cookery. The New Jersey natives have lived in the nation's capital for years, but they say it's overdue for a delicatessen.

"It's nice that we finally have a place that has quality Jewish food, Jewish-American food, I would call it," Jon says. "We have a couple of other places, but they're not terribly good, so we're very happy with it."

The menu is not exactly what you would find in a place like New York's famous Katz's Deli. There's a grilled eggplant Reuben, smoked salmon pastrami served on bagels imported from Montreal, and a pickle plate. The menu describes the pickles as "half sours, dills and whatever else we can get our hands on."

The men behind the restaurant say they aren't trying to create literal reinterpretations of Jewish deli food. Instead, they say, they see themselves as part of a renaissance currently happening with Jewish cuisine.

Experimenting With Tradition

"Barry and I worked together about ten years ago," says partner Nick Wiseman, referring to DGS executive chef Barry Koslow. "There was an authenticity about cooking Jewish food that we hadn't felt cooking French or Italian food because it was our roots. It felt like our own."

Both Wiseman and Koslow say they have childhood memories of Sunday brunch with bagels, lox and schmear -- but they weren't raised in a particularly religious family. And they definitely didn't keep Kosher.

"We spent a lot more time eating Chinese food than Jewish food," Wiseman recalls.

The duo have worked in some of D.C.'s finest restaurants, but when it came time to open their own restaurant, Jewish food just felt right.

"When we started cooking this food and looking back at the history and sort of relearning these recipes, it did feel very authentic, like we were learning more about ourselves," Wiseman says.

It was also exciting to bring Jewish food back to Washington. In the 1920s, the nation's capital had plenty of Jewish delis. But, as happened in many U.S. cities, they died off.

The third-generation Washingtonians saw their chance to revive their Jewish heritage with a modern taste.

"There's this whole movement of people wanting to make everything from scratch, bringing back the old mom and pop feel by being the store owners, being there, working on everything, procuring everything and making it all by hand. And it's exciting and, hopefully, it's something that's gonna stick," Koslow says.

A New Way Of Noshing

The modern Jewish delicatessen is showing up across the country in places like Brooklyn, at Mile End Deli, as well as San Francisco's Wise Sons and Portland's Kenny and Zuke's. Each of these restaurants is serving up traditional plates like Reubens and chopped liver while also taking liberties.

"My dad put it best the other night when he was laughing at me," Koslow explains. "He said, 'How did you become the expert on all things Jewish in one year?' And I laughed too, because growing up, let's just say I wasn't the best Jew."

For Passover this year, the restaurant's first since it opened four months ago, Koslow is serving a vegetarian menu. For meat eaters, there was matzo ball soup infused with bone marrow.

"Traditionally, matzo balls are made with chicken fat, or schmaltz," Koslow says. "What we've done for the holiday is we've replaced the schmaltz with bone marrow ... and we roast it very slowly so that all the fat renders out, and then we save all that fat. You can smell just how rich and decadent it is."

They also infuse the broth with Asian influences like ginger and scallion, simply because, Koslow says, "it's fun for us to do something different."

As proud as Koslow is of his matzo balls, he recognizes they'll never top the ones made by Jewish grandmothers, or bubbes.

"Everybody says, 'These are almost as good as my bubbe's, almost,' " Koslow says, boasting that so far this Passover, he has already made at least 400 matzo balls for his customers.