SAM LIPSKI

YOU’VE heard of “Save the Whale” campaigns and now, if Sunday’s 60 Minutes is correct, “Save the Dolphins” is the next big thing.

But it’s time for AJN readers to focus on “Save the Deli” -– a campaign to be launched this weekend in New York.

Unfortunately, the deli really needs saving. So much so that David Sax started a blog, and has now written a book with a title to match the gargantuan sandwiches: Save the Deli: One Man’s Globetrotting Quest for Pickled Meats, Mile-High Sandwiches, and the Taste of the True Jewish Delicatessen.

New York, of course, is where it all began. As the New York Times reported (12/10) after interviewing Sax -– a 30-year-old Canadian journalist -– East European Jewish immigrants in the late 19th century landed at Ellis Island with  their taste for pickled and smoked meats.

By the 1930s, Sax estimated the city had at least 1500 kosher and “kosher-style” delis. Today, the Times said, there are about two dozen kosher ones left, and a handful of the better-known “kosher-style” restaurants.

Some definitions may be helpful.
Q. When’s a deli not a deli?
A. When it’s in Australia.

Here the delicatessens are grocery stores or market stalls. Mostly they sell foods of European, Mediterranean, and increasingly Asian origin, a  transformation from the high-tin, white-loaf country of the 1940s, to today’s land of many splendoured cheeses and endless varieties of olives.

But for me, as good as they often are, Oz delis aren’t real delis. You go to them to buy food to take away. Not to sit and eat in them. And certainly not to be insulted, brow-beaten, and occasionally coddled by the waiters and waitresses, which is half the fun in America.

The real delis, NY style, offer corned beef, pastrami, and smoked turkey on rye with a pickle, sour or half-sour. And the jumbo sandwiches compete with the hanging salamis, latkes, and matzah ball soup for the diner’s attention and appetite.

Who’s killing the deli? The American recession and a fall-off in customers are the most recent factors, and the competition from supermarkets, chain restaurants, and even corner stores selling kosher and “kosher-style” products,  has made the traditional deli economically unviable.

But Sax noted also that Jews are largely assimilated and don’t want to eat only Jewish food. When they do, the Times added, they find that while pastrami and brisket are delicious, health food they are not.

In my travels around the Jewish world over the past 40 years, I’ve come across various attempts to recreate the American-Jewish deli.

One oft-cited example has been Blooms in London, with its highly promoted salt-beef sandwiches. Sorry, it just doesn’t compare.

There are some good restaurants in the Marais, the Jewish quarter in Paris, but the Sephardic places are better than the Ashkenazi ones, and none are delis.

And while I’ve enjoyed heimish restaurants in Israel -– Shmuliks in Tel Aviv, the late very lamented Fefferburgs in Jerusalem, and Dizengoff Centre for lunch come to mind and palate -– none of them were, or are, delis.

As for Melbourne and Sydney, we’ve had some valiant efforts. But none have quite made it, which, may my cardiologist forgive me, is a shame.

After all, Australian kosher butchers make very high quality smallgoods (except they can’t do pastrami), and our bakers do good rye bread. And sometimes we do great pickles. (But nobody understands half-sours here.)

Although American delis have acquired a reputation among generations of Australian tourists, nobody -– Jewish or non-Jewish -– has been able to sustain a New York-style deli in Martin Place or Bondi, Flinders Lane or Caulfield.

Will Sax succeed in his campaign? We know nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. But the deli may well be an exception; certainly if Sax’s rapturous and very nostalgic advance reviews are anything to go by.

Typical is the review from Michael Wex, an authoritative writer and scholar on Yiddish, and the author of Born to Kvetch, which I commend highly.

For Wex, the Sax book is a “Bromo-fuelled cri de coeur on behalf of the … food that keeps its devotees, whether Jewish or not, from going goyish into that good night … Sax’s book is an unparalleled look at [what] has given generations the strength to kvetch and a reason to do so.”

Of course we live in hope. But to be realistic, an Australian saying we remember every November 11 seems apt: “Well may we say ‘Sax Save the Deli’, for nothing will save the pastrami sandwich.”

Sam Lipski is the chief executive of The Pratt Foundation and a former editor-in-chief of The AJN.