Latest / Meet Me At The Deli / Live! From the Sour Cream Sierras with Dan Vetrano, Willie Zabar, and Rocco Marinaccio

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Live! From the Sour Cream Sierras with Dan Vetrano, Willie Zabar, and Rocco Marinaccio · Meet Me At The Deli

• 0:15
  Welcome to Meet Me at the Deli. We're doing a live taping of our
• 0:20
  food advice podcast, where the Pickles and slaw are always
• 0:23
  free. So my name's Liz.
• 0:25
  And I'm Jeffrey, and for those who haven't heard our podcast
• 0:28
  yet, every episode we're answering burning food and
• 0:31
  culinary questions and we're sharing stories and insights
• 0:34
  from our years of working in the industry and living in our
• 0:38
  self-made shtetl. And we are here from Brooklyn.
• 0:41
  So it's our shtetl in Brooklyn, but this is part of the extended
• 0:44
  shtetl. Yeah.
• 0:46
  Oh yeah. Let's hear it from Brooklyn.
• 0:48
  OK. Brooklyn.
• 0:48
  Love it. And here we are, live at the
• 0:51
  Borscht Belt Festival. Ellenville, New York, everybody.
• 0:55
  And, and this is our third, this is our third time doing the
• 1:01
  Borscht Belt Festival. So this is really something that
• 1:03
  we feel invested in and I'd say we feel honored.
• 1:06
  So thanks for selling out this room for us today.
• 1:09
  We appreciate it. Yeah, So Liz, Liz, what are your
• 1:11
  bona fides here to be at the Borscht Belfest?
• 1:13
  Do you have any Catskills yetness of some kind?
• 1:16
  Well, you know, my family's been up in Tannersville for many
• 1:21
  years, which is a little less Porsche belt, a little further
• 1:23
  up, more ski vibes. And I always thought that my dad
• 1:28
  worked as a waiter in the Pines in in the Borscht Belt.
• 1:32
  And he confessed to me this morning that it was actually a
• 1:35
  hotel called The Pines in Lakewood, NJ.
• 1:38
  This is this morning on my way here and but he told me that he
• 1:43
  used to go to the Pines here in the Catskills because his friend
• 1:48
  worked there and he got into the shows for free.
• 1:49
  So I thought that was pretty good, you know?
• 1:51
  This really changes your whole narrative I.
• 1:53
  Know years. Later, Oh my gosh, I've been
• 1:55
  hearing about the Pines for all these years.
• 1:57
  OK, so, so I, my so First off, my last name is Joskowitz.
• 2:01
  And there was, I actually learned I was calling it the
• 2:03
  Joskowitz family farm, but there was a Kovitz family farm right
• 2:07
  nearby, right outside of Monticello for a number of
• 2:10
  years. It was sold in the 60s and now
• 2:13
  it's a hunting lodge. I actually learned that my
• 2:15
  family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were hunting up
• 2:19
  there, which. No, a little shock, I don't
• 2:21
  think. So I just learned this.
• 2:23
  I think that might be like my dad telling me he worked in the
• 2:25
  cat. My my grandmother Lily and her
• 2:30
  her cousin Yetta were the social coordinators at the Vegetarian
• 2:34
  Hotel in Woodbridge if anyone anyone heard of the Vegetarian
• 2:37
  Hotel? OK, vegetarians.
• 2:40
  Oh, I see a handbag there as well.
• 2:42
  So I always heard my father every summer of his life as a
• 2:45
  kid, came up to the Catskills from Brooklyn.
• 2:48
  And when I was a kid, 1 summer, we had a family reunion at
• 2:51
  Kutcher's. So I got to get a taste.
• 2:53
  And this was in the 90s. We're talking like this is late,
• 2:55
  late, you know, Borscht Belt. But on that said, this is a
• 2:58
  place that's I think had an outsized role in both of our
• 3:01
  lives. And so Liz and I have been
• 3:03
  working in in the Jewish food world.
• 3:05
  We started the company called the Gefilte Rio.
• 3:07
  We made probably like the most artisanal gefilte fish you could
• 3:11
  buy in the store, OK. Gotta love it we.
• 3:13
  Got some. Yeah, we got some gefilte bands,
• 3:15
  but we've also been doing work to revive and reclaim and to
• 3:18
  celebrate the foods of our shared heritage, which is the
• 3:21
  foods of the Eastern European Jewish Ashkenazi Cannon, the
• 3:25
  deli foods. And so part of this podcast is
• 3:28
  to us to celebrate those foods and to just talk about, answer
• 3:33
  the questions that have been coming up to us, because people
• 3:35
  come up to us and ask us all sorts of questions.
• 3:38
  Often it's etiquette. What do you do in a deli when
• 3:39
  you don't like the rug loss? Like what do you say, you know,
• 3:44
  people griping about different kinds of smears, the the rise of
• 3:48
  corporate bagel, you know, and people want to have thoughts
• 3:51
  about it. They want to talk, they want to
• 3:52
  hear our thoughts. And so we've been started this
• 3:54
  podcast as an opportunity and often there are questions we
• 3:58
  don't have the answers to. But luckily, having been in the
• 4:00
  industry, we have friends that we can call upon to help us
• 4:03
  answer those questions. That's right.
• 4:05
  And I think it's time to bring up our guests.
• 4:07
  I think it's ready to go. So we've got some amazing
• 4:10
  guests. Let's give it up for Rocco,
• 4:11
  Willie and Dan. Come on up, guys, come on up.
• 4:19
  They are going to help us get into the questions right away
• 4:23
  because there's something else in here immediately following
• 4:27
  this event. OK. 1st 1st we need some
• 4:30
  introduction. Oh, yeah.
• 4:31
  Yeah. OK.
• 4:32
  All right, so let's start. Dan, we hear that you're the
• 4:35
  wandering comedian here at the Borscht Belt Festival.
• 4:38
  The roving. What are you doing here?
• 4:39
  Oh, the roving What? Are you like, I like the term
• 4:41
  wandering Jew? Yes, but but yeah, I've been
• 4:44
  roving around. I was.
• 4:47
  Maybe some of you saw me. I was dressed as a booby.
• 4:51
  And your last name is Vetrano. Let's make sure we do.
• 4:53
  Everything. Follows you.
• 4:54
  Yes, I'm a pizza bagel, which, you know, it's, if you don't
• 4:59
  know, is Italian Jew. But I, I think it's really more
• 5:02
  because I'm a quick and easy snack, you know, and you know,
• 5:07
  be patient with me or I'll burn you.
• 5:10
  But also I really do lack proper nutrition.
• 5:13
  So I'm the pizza bagel in a lot of ways.
• 5:16
  And yeah, I'm, I'm vegan, so I, I'm kind of working on building
• 5:21
  the world's greatest vegan tuna melt right now is my big thing.
• 5:27
  And I'm a comedian and I host a show called Get Work in
• 5:30
  Manhattan, which is some job interviews, comedians on job
• 5:33
  interviews, so. Incredible.
• 5:35
  Thank you, David Trundle. Thanks for being here.
• 5:37
  Thank you. And yeah, Willie, Willie.
• 5:41
  Hi, I'm Willie Zabar. I'm a comedian from New York
• 5:43
  City. There's one side of my family
• 5:47
  does some things in food, and no one asked about the other half.
• 5:51
  But that happened. Mom's side, her parents actually
• 5:54
  met working in the Caskill resorts.
• 5:56
  My grandma, my mom's side, was a dance teacher at Laurel of the
• 5:59
  Pines, and my grandfather on my mom's side was a waiter at
• 6:02
  Grossingers. So that's the secret second-half
• 6:05
  that nobody asks about. So Willie, just two things. 1 is
• 6:09
  when we were making our Goodfeld division.
• 6:11
  The first score we ever sold it in was Zaybar's.
• 6:14
  Noise. So wanted to know second, do we
• 6:17
  have any juicy gossip, Zaybar's history, anything to share with
• 6:21
  us? Well, I just want to say the
• 6:22
  views expressed on this podcast did not necessarily reflect
• 6:24
  those of Zaybars or the Zaybars man.
• 6:28
  But talk to me after. Nah, it's good.
• 6:30
  It's still there. It's still there.
• 6:31
  It's still there. Thank you.
• 6:33
  Give it up. And then we've got to bring our
• 6:37
  history. We've got to bring, you know,
• 6:39
  the nerdness. So if there's something that you
• 6:41
  know about our podcast and maybe we'll entice you to listen more
• 6:45
  as we really like to go deep. So we've got a historian here.
• 6:47
  Rocco, can you introduce yourself?
• 6:49
  Yeah, hi, I'm Rocco Marinaccio, and I live in the borough where
• 6:54
  I was born and raised, Bronx, NY.
• 6:57
  Bronx. Bronx.
• 6:59
  Bronx. I guess, yeah.
• 7:01
  I guess as a professor I lay claim to nerddom.
• 7:04
  Although I'm not a historian, I'm a lit professor.
• 7:08
  But I do love to eat and cook and talk about food.
• 7:14
  Luckily, I get to do that in one of the great food cities of the
• 7:17
  globe, New York. And I do a lot of cooking and
• 7:21
  eating and talking about food with my students at Manhattan
• 7:25
  University, where I in addition to lit, and in the context of
• 7:29
  Lit, I teach food studies, ethnic studies, and New York
• 7:33
  studies. So I'm really glad to be here
• 7:37
  and gab with you all. Incredible.
• 7:40
  Give it up. Yeah.
• 7:42
  So we, we've brought you all here because we've got some
• 7:46
  questions, some listener questions, and I think the first
• 7:49
  one's a real zinger and I can't decide what my answer is.
• 7:52
  So I've decided that I'm going to moderate this question and
• 7:57
  maybe I'll have an answer by the end.
• 7:59
  So this is from our in New York City.
• 8:02
  We didn't get a name. In your opinion, what is the
• 8:05
  most iconic New York Jewish food?
• 8:11
  Jeffrey wanna start as. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 8:13
  I as a, as a gesture because it's like, like, listen, there's
• 8:16
  a, there's a few greatest hits here.
• 8:17
  I wanna make sure our guests get to go first.
• 8:20
  OK, So I, I, I know you have a you.
• 8:23
  You were. Excited about this with the
• 8:24
  Italian. Alright, yeah.
• 8:26
  Get in there. Unbiased.
• 8:28
  Let's let's hear from you. We're gonna we're gonna go.
• 8:30
  I'll go last and then lose your cop out.
• 8:32
  Well, maybe I'll get you to say something.
• 8:33
  OK, alright, sure. I can go with that.
• 8:36
  I I mean there are a lot of iconic New York foods and New
• 8:39
  York Jewish foods. The one that I love to think
• 8:43
  about and talk about is the Reuben sandwich.
• 8:48
  There is some scurrilous conversation that it was
• 8:51
  invented in Omaha, NE. So not happening.
• 8:56
  Arnold Reuben in Reuben's Deli, 1914, New York German Jewish
• 9:03
  deli Guy and the original Reuben sandwich had ham, Turkey,
• 9:10
  coleslaw and Swiss cheese en rye.
• 9:14
  What melted? Melted.
• 9:15
  Swiss or was it a non melted because well, the.
• 9:17
  Slaw leads people to believe it was a cold sandwich.
• 9:21
  There we go. Interesting.
• 9:22
  And so and it is the IT was theoretically produced for a
• 9:28
  celebrity. Various actresses have been
• 9:32
  named. Also, Charlie Chaplin has been
• 9:34
  named as a person who said I'm hungry, Arnold, fix me something
• 9:39
  big and I so the bigness is part of what I think makes it iconic,
• 9:43
  right? Because as we know, there is
• 9:46
  enough meat on a Reuben sandwich to feed a shtetl family for a
• 9:49
  week, right? And so it's part of the whole
• 9:52
  America thing. Lots of food, right?
• 9:56
  I also so and as we know, then the sandwich evolved, right?
• 10:00
  It got melted, and it's the cheese and whatever meat you're
• 10:07
  putting on it. Not kosher obviously indicates
• 10:12
  the way in which Jews often, you know, stop following kosher
• 10:18
  dietary practices. The Coast law got substituted
• 10:22
  for the Kraut real. You can't say that word, man.
• 10:27
  Real influence of the German delis where a lot of this was
• 10:30
  happening and processed food. Because the Russian dressing was
• 10:36
  invented in Vermont by a guy who made mayonnaise, right?
• 10:41
  Was he Russian? I don't think so, no.
• 10:45
  There you go. And so, yeah, So now we have the
• 10:50
  corned beef, the melted Swiss, the Russian dressing, the crowd.
• 10:55
  It gets griddled. And the one last thing that I'll
• 10:58
  throw out is the frequent substitution of pastrami, which
• 11:03
  has an amazing story in terms of its history.
• 11:06
  It's like medieval Kirk was the original pastirma, and it tended
• 11:11
  to be lots of wild animals smoked and cured.
• 11:15
  It came up through the Romanian Jews who called it pastrama and
• 11:20
  used goose. But now here are the immigrant
• 11:24
  Jews in the Lower East Side of New York.
• 11:27
  Goose, if it's available, is expensive.
• 11:30
  But we got brisket. And so, boom, the name pastrami
• 11:35
  thought, hey, it sounds like salami.
• 11:37
  Let's call a pastrami. And there you have it.
• 11:40
  Willie or Dan? Who's ready?
• 11:43
  Coming off, I'll go again. I'm going to go knish.
• 11:47
  I'm going to go knish. Thank you.
• 11:50
  Right. Oh, I've got a Knish crowd.
• 11:52
  Here we are. I love good Knish audience.
• 11:56
  Yeah. First of all, it's it's mainly
• 11:58
  usually vegan, which the two people who clap through the
• 12:01
  vegetarian hotels should be excited about.
• 12:04
  It's it's it's a Jewish Hot Pocket.
• 12:08
  I mean, what more can we want for that?
• 12:10
  You think there's going to be more in there?
• 12:11
  And it's mashed potatoes. What more do you need?
• 12:15
  You want more? You can get protein.
• 12:17
  We're holding it down at the food trucks.
• 12:19
  You know, like you go to food trucks all over Manhattan and
• 12:23
  you know, they've got the pretzels and they've got hot
• 12:25
  dogs and then knish. That's ours.
• 12:27
  That's ours. That belongs to us.
• 12:30
  Also, like you can get them in grocery stores for packs of like
• 12:36
  10 and they're like $0.50. They are OK.
• 12:40
  All right, now I'm losing the Knish crowd.
• 12:42
  Fine, they're $2.00. Fine, they're $2.00.
• 12:45
  They're cheap. You get it.
• 12:46
  I'm sorry, I exaggerated a little bit.
• 12:48
  This is a very this is a huge Knish crowd and they're not
• 12:50
  going to let me get away with that.
• 12:52
  OK, really this is a, this is a lot of pressure for you.
• 12:57
  OK, most iconic New York Jewish food.
• 13:00
  A bagel. But eaten like a true New
• 13:02
  Yorker, straight out the bag not cut in transit.
• 13:09
  Yes. Wow, wow.
• 13:11
  I love it. Reach in, just RIP it.
• 13:14
  In RIP it. RIP it, RIP it.
• 13:16
  Like that's how we do it if. Anyone is toasting a fresh
• 13:19
  bagel? Can we arrest them?
• 13:22
  Yeah, it's a fine thing all. Right.
• 13:24
  You know. Let's keep it moving.
• 13:25
  Yeah, we got more questions to get you, Jeffrey.
• 13:27
  Willie, just question, do you have, do you have a favorite
• 13:29
  bagel place in the city? Just very.
• 13:31
  Quickly. I think it's called Zubars.
• 13:33
  I'm 100% sure. Just wanted to check OK.
• 13:36
  Oh, I love them. So I'm recalibrating as I'm
• 13:39
  crossing everything off of my list here.
• 13:42
  I will say, and I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go sweet noodle cogel.
• 13:46
  OK, OK, OK. I'm sensing them.
• 13:49
  Not so much enthusiasm here. I want to say that.
• 13:51
  Make the case. Cogel misunderstood.
• 13:54
  OK, A lot of people here we, we, we have a reductive view of
• 13:57
  cogel in these days. We think of cogel as just like
• 13:59
  only a noodle, only potato Cogel.
• 14:01
  Cogel is a catch all. OK, New York immigrant Jews, all
• 14:05
  of their leftovers, they threw them together in like in a
• 14:07
  casserole dish. You had leftover noodles, you
• 14:10
  would leftover fruit. You had a cookbook in the back
• 14:14
  with multiple cookable sections, though.
• 14:16
  I'm going to show from Vilna in the 1930s.
• 14:19
  Kogel is essential ingredient in Jewish cooking.
• 14:21
  This is an amazing book, the building vegetarian cookbook
• 14:24
  with rice Kogel, Kogel. Every leftover you have you
• 14:28
  would throw together and you'd make it into a thing.
• 14:30
  Now at one point Kogel was the home food.
• 14:33
  So you can go on the street, you can get your knish, you can get
• 14:35
  your bagel, you can get your your Reuben out out.
• 14:38
  But at home, what did you eat? You ate Kogel so that I would
• 14:42
  argue that the New York Jews were eating more Kogel than
• 14:44
  anything else. Secondly, I will say like the
• 14:47
  sweet noodle Kogel is like the most American excessive,
• 14:52
  abundant, ridiculous thing in the world.
• 14:54
  When the one in the art book has it's there's butter, there's
• 14:57
  sour, there's there's no cottage cheese, farmer's cheese.
• 15:02
  There's it's just eggs, eggs. It's it's insane.
• 15:06
  But in it back in the shtetl, you never have that much.
• 15:09
  OK, but this was American abundance celebration.
• 15:11
  And to me it is not a family brunch within it.
• 15:15
  Maybe there's there's bagels and there's locks and it's all in
• 15:17
  this buck. I don't think niches make it to
• 15:19
  the brunch, but the centerpiece, the sweet noodle cogel and my
• 15:23
  family with the cornflake crusts.
• 15:25
  Yeah. All right.
• 15:26
  All right, all right. Listen.
• 15:28
  Listen, I love you all, but you, There's an oversight here.
• 15:32
  There's an oversight. And Jeffrey, I was convinced you
• 15:33
  were going to choose it. But it's clear to me that the
• 15:36
  answer to this question is the pickle.
• 15:38
  It's the pickle, everybody. It's the.
• 15:40
  Pickle, The humble pickle. I'm not saying Jews invented
• 15:44
  Pickles. If you've been to Eastern Europe
• 15:46
  lately, there's a lot of Pickles.
• 15:47
  There's Pickles all over the world lately.
• 15:49
  There are, there are so many Pickles.
• 15:51
  There are Pickles in every culture.
• 15:53
  But a kosher dill pickle, It was the Jews who popularized them on
• 15:57
  the Lower East Side, so much so that it was transgressive.
• 16:01
  It was like, oh, downtown, they're eating a lot of garlic
• 16:04
  and dill. You better watch out.
• 16:05
  So I think that it is. And there's a pickle festival.
• 16:08
  It's huge. It's crazy.
• 16:09
  You can't even get a pickle because it's so popular today on
• 16:12
  the Lower East Side of New York City.
• 16:14
  So for me, if we're talking about icons, we're talking about
• 16:18
  the kosher dill pickle. So to me, that's just obvious.
• 16:21
  And I'm shocked that none of you got the right answer to this
• 16:24
  question. You should be sour about it.
• 16:29
  That's a great segue to our next question.
• 16:33
  OK, so next question here. This is from Matt in Oakland.
• 16:38
  My bubby once told me that she used to make a green borscht,
• 16:42
  but she never wrote down any of her recipes and she wasn't well
• 16:46
  enough to cook when I knew her. Is this a real thing?
• 16:49
  If yes, do you know of any good recipes for it?
• 16:53
  We got you Matt in Oakland. So I've heard some people
• 16:57
  shouting out the name for a green borscht.
• 17:00
  Shove, right? This is a this is a borscht that
• 17:04
  this is a soup. It can be hot or cold, made with
• 17:07
  sorrel or other sourish greens. Has anyone ever had it before
• 17:12
  other than the couple of people? OK, we got a few people.
• 17:14
  Any shove, super fans? No Shaw haters.
• 17:20
  Yeah, any Shaw haters it sounds. Like, tell us how you really
• 17:23
  feel. OK.
• 17:24
  Anyone forced to eat Shaw when they were growing up and they
• 17:26
  have a lot of trauma from that experience.
• 17:28
  OK, OK. Sounds like that's the case.
• 17:31
  It's all my goodness people, so I think I should hate it too.
• 17:34
  There's some overlap here. So yeah, Schaub actually means
• 17:38
  Yiddish resoral, often like sour grass.
• 17:41
  And this is, you know, it's often called green borscht
• 17:45
  because borscht is actually identified as like a sour soup
• 17:49
  that like that's what borscht is known for is its sourness.
• 17:53
  And one of the key ingredients is that this beets, but it
• 17:58
  actually fermented beets. So in back in the old days.
• 18:00
  So listen, I take it back to the shtetl often, but it would be
• 18:03
  fermented beets. So it's something called
• 18:05
  Russell, which you might have heard of, which basically means
• 18:07
  like a brine, but it's often referred to a very sour beet
• 18:11
  brine from your, you know, everyone classic you all, I'm
• 18:14
  sure you all keep beets and barrels in your root Cellars
• 18:16
  these days so that the the liquid at the bottom is what you
• 18:19
  use to sour your borscht. So that here you have a kind of
• 18:23
  late spring summer soup your your when your sorrel's in
• 18:27
  season and it's a sour soup. And so here it often be became a
• 18:31
  green Porsche. So I actually happen to like
• 18:35
  Chav. On a day like today, a chilled
• 18:38
  glass of chav, perfect your refreshing would cool you down.
• 18:43
  A little sour cream in there. Come on.
• 18:45
  A glass, not a cold. It's cold so you could just kind
• 18:48
  of sip on. It, Oh my gosh, put in.
• 18:49
  A camelback just kind of sip it like.
• 18:52
  Listen, it's a Jewish. Now you really understand.
• 18:55
  Yeah, a Jewish gazpacho. And the sour plays a role in the
• 18:59
  summer, right? The sour helps.
• 19:01
  It activates our salivary glands.
• 19:03
  It gives us the illusion of refreshment, of hydration.
• 19:07
  So that's why a pickle, A sour pickle at the deli or at zay
• 19:11
  bars. Oh, OK, now you're pandering.
• 19:15
  Listen, I paid. Him so much money before they.
• 19:17
  Yeah, we really kaching a sour pickle is gonna actually help
• 19:22
  refresh on a hot day in the sun in Ellenville.
• 19:26
  Right. So it's just worth noting that
• 19:28
  borscht is not just beets mat in Oakland, it is also made with
• 19:32
  greens and there's also a white borscht, which is delicious, can
• 19:35
  be just made with potatoes with cream.
• 19:38
  So there borscht is more of a category and our association
• 19:42
  with it as just beets is we're missing so many good soups.
• 19:47
  Any other thoughts anyone has about cold soups before we move
• 19:50
  on to? Well, there was one part of the
• 19:52
  question, which was where to get it.
• 19:54
  That's good. Yeah, you gotta make it in that.
• 19:56
  I actually don't know any place that I can say is a standout
• 20:00
  borscht. I see it on some delays.
• 20:02
  We actually had some 2nd Ave. Deli representation earlier
• 20:05
  today. Yes, and I'm trying to recall if
• 20:07
  there's a shop on the menu. Actually we have is shop on the
• 20:09
  menu. I don't know.
• 20:13
  OK. I think we could go down to
• 20:14
  Brighton Beach, though, in Brooklyn.
• 20:16
  Yeah. And we could get some Shah
• 20:18
  there. I think that would be your spot.
• 20:19
  So, so I will, I would be remiss if we did not also just discuss
• 20:23
  borscht for a moment while we were at the Borscht Belt bands.
• 20:26
  Right. So are there any borscht bands
• 20:28
  here? OK, yeah, OK.
• 20:31
  OK. Any.
• 20:32
  So I will say two things. One is I'm not sure if you all
• 20:34
  know, so the Borscht Belt was coined by Abel Green in variety
• 20:39
  magazine, referring to the Jewish Alps, the sour cream
• 20:43
  Sierras. But the Borscht belt is what
• 20:46
  really stook what took and one of the reasons why.
• 20:50
  And I just I love this is a great book by Michael Wex called
• 20:54
  Rhapsody and Schmaltz about the Yiddish Jewish foods.
• 20:57
  And he he there's a Yiddish song by Mihir Kharatsu Epheme Horny
• 21:03
  Chorny, I don't know exact last name.
• 21:05
  He the quote the the song goes. I have never eaten such a
• 21:08
  borscht nor known such a taste. I can't forget you, darling,
• 21:12
  because I love you. And this is a love song where
• 21:15
  borscht is a stand in for this person's beloved.
• 21:18
  And he said uses this as an example of well, there could
• 21:22
  have been many delightful iconic foods to name after this region.
• 21:26
  Borscht was just so beloved. It was such a part of the
• 21:29
  culture that of course it would Borscht Belt would be the name
• 21:33
  that stuck, that took. I keep saying stuck.
• 21:36
  I don't know why. And the other thing I'll just
• 21:37
  mention here, the other piece about borscht is, is a great
• 21:43
  Yiddish aphorism. It's if you want to say to
• 21:46
  someone, it's not rocket science.
• 21:47
  One of the Yiddish proverbs would be for borscht.
• 21:50
  You don't need any teeth. And, and, and there are a lot of
• 21:55
  these like, you know, pieces of Yiddish wisdom connected to
• 21:58
  borscht. So borscht plays an outsized
• 22:01
  role. So of course there's a Shab, an
• 22:02
  unpopular soup, you know, the Shab's PR campaign.
• 22:05
  It's, it's we're just a green borscht.
• 22:07
  You know it's trying to glom on to the success of Borscht here
• 22:10
  in America. Well, that really ended on a
• 22:13
  downer, no? Can I wait, Can I jump in on
• 22:16
  that borscht song thing? So I think it may be a reference
• 22:20
  to that or kind of like a cover to that.
• 22:21
  But there's a musician named Daniel Kahn.
• 22:23
  He's his band Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, and they have
• 22:25
  a song called Borscht. We visited and it's a little bit
• 22:28
  dirtier. The main, the first line is this
• 22:31
  borscht is making love inside my belly.
• 22:34
  Never have I tasted such a Stew. I think of you and something
• 22:37
  starts expelling because there is something about you.
• 22:41
  It's romantic and it sounds very horny.
• 22:44
  Yeah. Everybody said all.
• 22:46
  I thought that was disgusting. Yeah, OK.
• 22:50
  I really like Borscht. Yeah.
• 22:54
  Learning a lot about the. Crew, all right, had to talk
• 22:57
  about borscht here at the Borscht Festival.
• 22:58
  Borscht Belt festival question #3 This is a little more
• 23:04
  serious, everybody, so get ready.
• 23:06
  My family always alluded to facing significant hunger in
• 23:11
  Eastern Europe before immigrating to the United
• 23:13
  States. Do you think that that's why
• 23:17
  food and eating are so central to the Jewish American
• 23:21
  experience, especially at the Borscht Belt hotels?
• 23:26
  Or is food and eating just a part of every immigrant culture?
• 23:30
  What do you think from Jodi Maine?
• 23:33
  I mean, as somebody who's been dressed as a boobie all day, I
• 23:37
  feel a little qualified. I think it's both.
• 23:40
  I definitely think that like, it is definitely part of the
• 23:42
  immigrant experience, but also like our grandmothers definitely
• 23:47
  are more in touch with that part that Jodie's referencing about
• 23:51
  like the hunger that we experience.
• 23:53
  You know, we're sort of living today, like especially living in
• 23:56
  New York City, it's like you don't really feel like you go
• 23:59
  hungry anymore. But like where we come from and
• 24:02
  our history is really dark. And so so you know that making
• 24:06
  sure that our community stays together by feeding each other
• 24:10
  is such an essential part because that's like these
• 24:13
  recipes themselves are passed down from generation to
• 24:16
  generation. And so it's more than just like
• 24:19
  feeding each other, but it's also passing traditions down,
• 24:22
  right? And so it's sort of like how you
• 24:26
  teach your kids your family tree, like you teach your kids a
• 24:30
  recipe. And a lot of our grandmothers
• 24:33
  and grandparents don't even really write them down.
• 24:35
  They just have them memorized and they show us how to make
• 24:37
  them. You know, one of the things that
• 24:38
  we often talk about when we look at the experience of immigrants
• 24:41
  in the United States is that the last thing that changes in an
• 24:45
  immigrant home is the contents of the refrigerator, right?
• 24:47
  So people lose the language of their national origin.
• 24:53
  They abandoned the religious practices of the national
• 24:55
  origin. They, they, they move away from
• 24:59
  the music and the dancing and so on.
• 25:02
  But the food kind of remains, right.
• 25:05
  And so I think that's, that's something to keep in mind.
• 25:08
  And I, I think what also when you just think about the
• 25:10
  phenomenon of emigration, like what it means to leave your
• 25:16
  home, especially in the era when the great majority of Jewish
• 25:22
  Americans emigrated, late 19th, early 20th century, right?
• 25:25
  Many people were leaving their homes and their families and
• 25:29
  never going to see their mothers and fathers again, never going
• 25:31
  to see their siblings again, right?
• 25:33
  So it's a big deal to move, right?
• 25:36
  Anybody comes to the United States, anybody immigrates, and
• 25:40
  anybody comes to the United States to improve your material
• 25:44
  circumstances. But I think it's really true
• 25:48
  that there were certain groups in the late 19th, early 20th
• 25:52
  century who came to eat better, right?
• 25:58
  Very famously, the Irish left in the middle of the 19th century
• 26:02
  for the potato famine. They were starving southern
• 26:06
  Italians left, end of the 19th early 20th century because of LA
• 26:11
  Misaria, right? Conditions of starvation in
• 26:16
  southern Italy, right? I had an uncle who joined a
• 26:21
  mercenary for Spain. Mercenary army for Spain
• 26:26
  fighting against Franco. And his father said to him, you
• 26:30
  must be out of your mind. You're going to get shot in the
• 26:33
  belly. And my great uncle said at least
• 26:36
  they'll be something in it. But for the Jews of Eastern
• 26:42
  Europe, there were really specific conditions that caused
• 26:48
  massive hunger and what we today call food insecurity, right?
• 26:53
  So, and many of this was in a series of laws that were enacted
• 26:59
  in Russia at the end of the 19th century, 1 restricting the great
• 27:04
  majority of Jews to urban areas, which means you cannot grow your
• 27:11
  own food, you cannot make your own food, you cannot be close to
• 27:14
  where food is being grown and made, right?
• 27:18
  There were taxes on kosher food that made it especially
• 27:24
  expensive, right? And there were also just
• 27:29
  restrictions on education and professional activity for Jews
• 27:34
  that just made earning enough money a comment, right?
• 27:40
  And so America became a place where you would have enough to
• 27:47
  eat, right? And so very, very specifically,
• 27:51
  we see the need for food and not simply getting over hunger, but
• 27:55
  having control. Over your food.
• 27:58
  Right. Getting to be able to make it,
• 28:00
  grow it, sell it, buy it in your community was part of what
• 28:07
  really motivated the Eastern European Jews to leave Eastern
• 28:13
  Europe and come to the United States.
• 28:17
  And so food then comes to be a sign of your success, right?
• 28:21
  So there's that great Shalom alaikum lullaby, Shlofman Kin,
• 28:25
  in which, you know, the mother says in there I will cook
• 28:30
  chicken soup for you and there will be hala every day, right?
• 28:34
  And this is so much a convention of the immigrant imagination of
• 28:39
  the United States, where like every day is going to be a
• 28:42
  holiday. We're going to eat every day
• 28:43
  like it's a holiday. There's a great book called
• 28:46
  Hungering for America, Hacia Diner Diner, and there's quotes
• 28:50
  from immigrants, not just Jewish immigrants, Irish, Italian
• 28:53
  immigrants, all talking about the experience of being in
• 28:55
  America. But some of that stand out for
• 28:57
  me. Is that quote We can eat every
• 28:59
  day, eating meat every day. I mean meat.
• 29:01
  We always say this, you know, talking about talking to a vegan
• 29:04
  here, the panel, My grandmother was a vegetarian, but eating
• 29:08
  meat was something you were lucky back in the in the old
• 29:10
  country, you were lucky to eat for Shabbat once a week.
• 29:13
  You know, it wasn't something that we could have multiple
• 29:16
  meals a day. Going to zay bars and getting
• 29:18
  all this smoked fish. That's insane.
• 29:20
  That's great. So, so basically I really
• 29:24
  appreciate what you said, Rocco. I will say this is a yes and
• 29:27
  question to me because I think there is something very much
• 29:30
  about that the singularity of that Jewish experience.
• 29:32
  And also, and Liz, we kind of have AI often joke with you this
• 29:37
  term of Jewish gastronomic exceptionalism, which is I
• 29:40
  think, like Jews often think that their thing is the only
• 29:43
  one. And yet like so many immigrant
• 29:45
  groups and like, even just like the Italians have a shared joy
• 29:50
  and love for eating excessive, prodigious meals.
• 29:54
  Because the sub in Italians that came and immigrated, they
• 29:57
  brought with them that hunger tradition.
• 29:58
  And we like that Irish tradition that you referenced.
• 30:00
  And and and so it's so funny because I always, always learned
• 30:04
  about yes, oh, because of our experiences, my family stories.
• 30:08
  This is why we especially love eating and over stuffing
• 30:11
  ourselves. And then also and not throwing
• 30:13
  food away. Oh.
• 30:15
  Yeah, don't. You throw that food away.
• 30:17
  That is a crime. Even even before before this I I
• 30:21
  was in the city and I was I should get a sandwich in case I
• 30:24
  get hungry. Just terrified and even here I'm
• 30:28
  like, oh, I'm probably not going to eat it.
• 30:29
  And I found a fridge in the backroom and I put it in there.
• 30:31
  I'm like, well, at least now it won't go to waste.
• 30:33
  So then once a sandwich is in there, I just want to say really
• 30:35
  quickly that like these perspectives of these larger
• 30:39
  kind of like movements are, are very helpful.
• 30:41
  But it's also good to think of like the individual level that
• 30:44
  they find that starvation in one generation affects the next
• 30:47
  generation psychologically. There's studies of the big, big
• 30:50
  Dutch hunger winter and then also huge occurrences of
• 30:53
  disordered eating in the children of Holocaust survivors,
• 30:56
  including survivors who never talked about their experiences
• 30:59
  with their children. So that is a big thing we're
• 31:04
  working on a psychological level.
• 31:05
  And then I figured connected to a joke which will.
• 31:07
  Hopefully lighten it a little bit.
• 31:08
  I for a time studied like Holocaust humor, but of Jews in
• 31:12
  the Holocaust, because there were shows, there were cabarets,
• 31:14
  there were people that took it upon themselves to kind of try
• 31:16
  to lighten the mood, I guess. But you know, give people
• 31:19
  something to look forward to. And everyone knows food was
• 31:22
  very, very scarce. People were a lot of cases
• 31:24
  subsiding on like less than the number of calories in a slice of
• 31:27
  pizza per day. And a lot of times would be a
• 31:29
  large pot of soup. But if you were unlucky, you're
• 31:31
  in the back of the line or, you know, they don't scoop from the
• 31:33
  bottom. It might just be water.
• 31:34
  So there was this kind of like desperate, you know, pushing to
• 31:37
  get them to scoop from the bottom.
• 31:38
  And one way that people would kind of take care of the hunger
• 31:41
  and distract themselves is they would sit around and imagine
• 31:43
  dinner parties and they would say, after the war, this is what
• 31:46
  I'm going to do. I'm going to cook this, I'm
• 31:47
  going to quit. And this is like a common joke
• 31:49
  apparently, in that at that time, oh, I'm going to have a,
• 31:52
  I'm going to have a wonderful dinner party and have this soup
• 31:56
  and it's going to have all this beautiful silverware around it.
• 31:58
  And I'll have servants come and they're gonna scoop it for me.
• 32:01
  And as they scoop it, I'm gonna say from.
• 32:03
  The bottom, the bottom, the love of God scoop from the bottom.
• 32:08
  So we need a Holocaust show. We needed a yeah.
• 32:13
  Good one there's. This show wouldn't have been
• 32:15
  right. I wanted that.
• 32:17
  One thing that comes up a lot when I'm talking to people who
• 32:20
  have varying backgrounds, which is that the one thing that is
• 32:22
  the thing that that jumps out at me about Jewish culture is that
• 32:26
  we have a lot of holidays. I don't know if you noticed, but
• 32:29
  we are holiday. We are a holiday or we have a
• 32:31
  holiday every week we have and it's multiple meals in that
• 32:35
  holiday. If you're lucky.
• 32:36
  We have holidays upon holidays and that is the calendar.
• 32:41
  That is the Jewish calendar. The holiday calendar is actually
• 32:44
  what sets the tone for Jewish lifestyle, for the Jewish
• 32:47
  lifestyle and Jewish culture. Even in the least religious
• 32:50
  households, you will often find that there's a special Friday
• 32:53
  dinner. There is we are doing Rosh
• 32:56
  Hashanah, we are having a breakfast for Yom Kippur.
• 32:58
  Holidays are at the center of Jewish culture wherever you are
• 33:02
  on the religious spectrum, in my experience and what we've
• 33:05
  observed. And so I think that the one
• 33:08
  thing that really jumps out at me is that we are centering our
• 33:12
  gatherings around those meals that we have at the holidays
• 33:15
  because people may not be going to synagogue, but let me tell
• 33:18
  you, they are not gonna miss that sweet noodle kugel at the
• 33:21
  young people at breakfast. They're not gonna miss them.
• 33:23
  And it's the same thing with Hollow on Fridays.
• 33:26
  It's the same thing with, you know, around holla on the new
• 33:30
  year. Everybody wants that.
• 33:31
  So I think that for me, what is exceptional or unique here is
• 33:36
  also the connection the the the never ending cycle of meals that
• 33:40
  happened through holiday celebrations.
• 33:43
  Yeah, well, listen, we, we did it.
• 33:46
  We we answered our questions and it is time we this is what we
• 33:50
  like to slide into the imaginary vinyl seats at the at the Oh,
• 33:56
  actually, no, we're gonna. No, we're taking live.
• 33:58
  Questions from the audience. I.
• 34:00
  Skipped it. Liz, I skipped it.
• 34:02
  We I see it here. We are not sliding into the
• 34:05
  vinyl booths, but we are actually going to take live
• 34:08
  questions now. Robin in Manhattan is asking
• 34:12
  about the history of Challen the Dish.
• 34:15
  Challen. Wow.
• 34:16
  Okay, could we anyone anyone have a definition?
• 34:20
  What's it define? Challenge.
• 34:21
  Okay, I'm not gonna define it as the Italian on the panel, but I
• 34:25
  do know. The other Italian on the panel.
• 34:27
  Other Italian so being a show of my left hand by the way, so.
• 34:33
  So define it, please, and then I can give you a little history,
• 34:37
  which is yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course I know what it
• 34:39
  is, but you say it. It's a It's a slow cooked
• 34:44
  Sabbath Stew. One could argue it is an iconic
• 34:48
  Jewish food. Maybe not a New York iconic
• 34:50
  Jewish food, but it is traditional to eat a hot meal on
• 34:54
  Shabbat afternoon, on Saturday afternoon.
• 34:58
  In fact, it's almost obligatory to do so.
• 35:00
  But if you cannot cook on Shabbat because that is
• 35:02
  considered work, how do you make a slow cooked Sabbath Stew?
• 35:06
  And how do you have a hot meal? You slow cook something and that
• 35:10
  is cholent. And I want to know are there any
• 35:13
  chillin fans? Here any lovers of chillin?
• 35:15
  Let's give some noise if you're a big.
• 35:17
  Chillin Fan. Oh yeah, any chillin haters?
• 35:21
  Here I I used to. Do I mean I'm?
• 35:23
  Going to hating shoulders. Isolated all the way in the
• 35:25
  corner. Here we got some ambivalent
• 35:27
  chillin folks as well. Yeah.
• 35:29
  Some OK, so. I've never had it either.
• 35:31
  Here's I mean, this is the kind of history that food history
• 35:35
  that kind of blows my mind. Let's see how it goes for you.
• 35:39
  Some of the when you do like a genealogy of cholent, it looks
• 35:44
  like it goes back to France and cassoulet, right, A very similar
• 35:49
  dish, long cooked, multiple meats, beans, root vegetables,
• 35:55
  right, right. And so I think, and it's really
• 35:59
  interesting, right, because it particularly in the United
• 36:01
  States, we think of cassoulet as being very sophisticated and we
• 36:05
  think of cholent as being, you know, just everyday peasant
• 36:09
  food. But it these routes go back to
• 36:12
  France. And one of the things that I
• 36:13
  love about this is it suggests the conditions of the Jewish
• 36:16
  community in Europe for these decades, right?
• 36:21
  Since the Middle Ages in which there was tons of movement,
• 36:26
  right? Yeshiva students moved around,
• 36:29
  communities moved around, merchants moved around and the
• 36:34
  the cooking of the Eastern European Jews is actually so
• 36:38
  astoundingly global because of the Jewish diaspora and the
• 36:44
  example of castle a kind of contributing to cholent, I think
• 36:49
  really, you know, lets us understand that.
• 36:51
  And for those who don't know cholent, I'll say it's it's much
• 36:55
  more commonly eaten in the more Orthodox communities.
• 36:57
  I did not grow up with it. I couched it later on, I think
• 37:00
  when I went to college for the first time.
• 37:02
  But if you go to Krakow or Warsaw and in the old Jewish
• 37:07
  quarter cashmeres, you'll see people on the street selling
• 37:10
  children, which is kind of wild since this is the most at home
• 37:14
  food you could ever eat. And but yet it became a street
• 37:17
  food now as part of the telling. Of the Jewish.
• 37:20
  Story that they do in in Poland. Yeah, and.
• 37:23
  And the only other thing I wanted to add is that there is
• 37:26
  no exact like everybody has their own formula for it.
• 37:29
  It's like a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
• 37:31
  So you can go to one persons home and they put a lot of
• 37:34
  barley and some people don't like a lot of barley and some
• 37:36
  people put potatoes, some people put an egg.
• 37:38
  And there is a Sephardic equivalent called Hamin and,
• 37:44
  and, and which means like hot, right?
• 37:45
  So, so this is a food that can take on those global notes, as
• 37:49
  Rocco said, and can be made how you want it.
• 37:52
  In our cookbook, we have both a Hungarian inspired chalant
• 37:56
  that's made with lots of smoked paprika, like a little bit like
• 37:59
  a goulash. And then we also have a vegan
• 38:02
  one a little bit inspired by an Asian kanji, right?
• 38:05
  So the dish is really a slow cooked Stew that can be made in
• 38:08
  lots of different ways. So if you are not a fan, it
• 38:11
  might be you just didn't have quite the right formula.
• 38:13
  That's what I would say. OK, let's take another one.
• 38:16
  Dane in Kingston, NY, asked us about scooping bagels and goes
• 38:21
  to bagel shops and says do you scoop to the bagel purveyors
• 38:26
  and. Dia Scoop.
• 38:27
  Do you scoop? And then you are met often with
• 38:30
  blank stares and questions. And so the question, I guess is
• 38:33
  what about scooping? I'm pro scooping.
• 38:37
  I'm a pro scooper. Yes.
• 38:39
  What is? It's a Shonda.
• 38:40
  How many scoopers do we How many scoopers do we have scoopers.
• 38:44
  You don't have to throw out the bar that you scoop, you can use
• 38:47
  it for your. The Scoopers.
• 38:48
  You're gonna Google. Scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop.
• 38:54
  What is scooping Willie? Can you tell us?
• 38:57
  Scooping is in the attempt to lower the number of calories in
• 39:02
  the bagel by removing some of it but then still eating it.
• 39:05
  Is it? You create a case.
• 39:08
  It's a case for the fillings. Yeah.
• 39:10
  See, this person over here is like scooping.
• 39:12
  It's everything I can see. Yeah, you.
• 39:14
  It's perfect. You get exactly.
• 39:16
  You're holding your toppings in. Otherwise it goes everywhere.
• 39:19
  Yeah, it's like all over the place.
• 39:20
  Jane, can we ask, do you scoop for the the technique of keeping
• 39:25
  everything inside or is it more like a health conscious thing?
• 39:32
  She scooped in honor of her grandmother.
• 39:34
  Well that is a beautiful third option I did not have.
• 39:36
  A Yeah, the outside IED. Right.
• 39:38
  OK, go back. She got me.
• 39:40
  She's like, I actually do it for my grandma.
• 39:41
  Getting out of control. Yes, scooping at this hits a lot
• 39:44
  of feelings. Felicia last one land from Kerr
• 39:48
  Hudson multiple choice question mustard colon mustard yellow or
• 39:54
  brown. I I think there might be just
• 39:57
  those two. There's the only one.
• 40:01
  I mean I off there's the only one.
• 40:02
  I I say deli, which I would say is like maybe neither a full
• 40:06
  brown mustard or a full yellow mustard.
• 40:09
  You know, like the soft serve ice cream machines you can get
• 40:11
  like chocolate and vanilla together.
• 40:13
  I want that. Yeah.
• 40:15
  Yellow. That's it, Willie.
• 40:19
  On Christmas I have the Chinese spicy brown mustard, but every
• 40:24
  other day I go yellow mustard. No.
• 40:27
  Okay, Oh my God, I lost everyone, should I leave?
• 40:30
  I'll leave. Yellow, Yellow.
• 40:32
  Yellow. Okay, wow, this.
• 40:37
  I'm overwhelmed by the hate for yellow mustard in this room.
• 40:42
  This is crazy. I was gonna say brown, but not
• 40:45
  just because I want you all to like me.
• 40:47
  Are you? For you, is brown mustard, deli
• 40:50
  mustard or okay? OK.
• 40:53
  All right, let's get some color. Like a ground or a whole grain
• 40:56
  mustard or some others, or there's different types of a
• 41:00
  darker mustard seed. So we're talking about deli
• 41:03
  mustard. So the answer for me is deli
• 41:05
  mustard. But I feel like for the visual
• 41:08
  on a hot dog, if you're doing a photo shoot, you want a yellow.
• 41:10
  Yeah. Everybody acted like I said.
• 41:12
  Mustard. I'm gonna admit that I have like
• 41:15
  9 jars of mustard in my refrigerator.
• 41:17
  That's right. Of many.
• 41:18
  Different colors, but I have to say, Bronx boy, my desert island
• 41:24
  mustard is gonna be yellow mustard.
• 41:26
  Wow, that's right. Listen, you heard it.
• 41:29
  We all need a desert island mustard, I think.
• 41:33
  OK. I'm like torn between for all
• 41:35
  these takes being like yo don't tell people what to do versus
• 41:39
  having such a rage baiting take that people like follow me on
• 41:42
  Instagram because they hate me so much but you should Snoop.
• 41:44
  From the spook side of the bagel, OK, well, listen, I think
• 41:48
  now we did it and we we've made it.
• 41:51
  We made it to the final segment of our podcast.
• 41:53
  This is the kvetchvel or share section.
• 41:57
  This is when usually me and Liz, but also now guests, we can
• 42:01
  fetch or fell about something. And listen, I'm sure there's a
• 42:04
  lot to fetch or fell about. I think we're going to get a few
• 42:07
  fetches that people didn't answer, get their questions
• 42:09
  answered. So and waiting for that and.
• 42:11
  Also, if anyone has anything to share, this is also a moment.
• 42:14
  Like we tend to bring little treats for each other as well.
• 42:16
  So this is what this is our version of sliding into the
• 42:19
  vinyl booths at the deli and having a conversation.
• 42:22
  So I'm gonna throw it out there. Dan, do you have a kvetch or a
• 42:25
  bell? I do, I have a kvetch and I know
• 42:30
  everybody has a kvetch with me about my mustard take, but OK,
• 42:35
  here it goes. You can expect this from a
• 42:37
  vegetarian. Gonna upset a lot of you and you
• 42:40
  know what? I'm fine with it.
• 42:42
  I would like to vetch about chopped liver I.
• 42:46
  Dan. Yes, yeah, I OK, so before I get
• 42:51
  beat up in the parking lot, here's why.
• 42:53
  Including mop, chop or just full on chopped.
• 42:55
  Liver all chopped liver OK yes, I get it iconic dish.
• 42:59
  I understand it. Here's the thing.
• 43:01
  I don't think we as people even like it.
• 43:04
  That's why we have an expression about it.
• 43:06
  You've never heard anybody say what am I to you homemade
• 43:09
  brisket. We right.
• 43:15
  I don't think we're enjoying it and I don't think and before you
• 43:19
  tell me, okay, the expression means oh, but that means it's
• 43:21
  underappreciated. Is it because no, like centuries
• 43:24
  ago, medieval Jewish farmers, you know, start some geese and
• 43:29
  make them taste buttery after we were start.
• 43:31
  That's gross. It's weird.
• 43:34
  Also, I get that necessity breeds invention.
• 43:36
  Not everything is a necessity. You know, Gene Simmons didn't
• 43:39
  need to start a band, but he did OK.
• 43:42
  And I don't think everyone should feel pressured to think
• 43:44
  that KISS is a contribution to the art that we should be proud
• 43:46
  of. And the last thing I'll say is,
• 43:51
  you know, it's why we we don't have to like everything just
• 43:55
  because we're Jewish, All right? Which is thank you.
• 43:58
  Which is why chopped liver is the Jared Kushner of Jewish
• 44:01
  foods. Wow, wow, wow.
• 44:10
  Yeah, we don't have time in our in this segment for rebuttals,
• 44:13
  but one forthcoming. Rocco, do you have anything to
• 44:17
  fetch for? Yeah, sure.
• 44:19
  I, I, I will say as a preface, I'm generally at Cabeller.
• 44:23
  You know, I, I think I'm a big lovin scene and I, and I think
• 44:29
  that one of the great things about eating in New York and
• 44:31
  eating in the United States is that we see all of these
• 44:33
  culinary traditions evolve and we put American spins on them.
• 44:39
  But I am here to kvetch about the cinnamon Raisin bagel.
• 44:46
  Sorry, Just give me my moment. If you want something sweet with
• 44:53
  a hole in it, eat a doughnut. I am.
• 44:59
  I am like team onion bagel, Team garlic bagel, team poppy seed
• 45:04
  bagel. All the bagels.
• 45:06
  Not sweet, please. That is taking the American
• 45:11
  insane sweet tooth just where it doesn't belong.
• 45:15
  It's like putting pineapple on pizza.
• 45:18
  It is monstrous. And the irony is I am the pizza
• 45:25
  half of a piece of bagel marriage.
• 45:28
  My nice Jewish boy husband enjoys a cinnamon race bagel and
• 45:35
  and a really and a really good A really good friend of mine was a
• 45:38
  nice Jewish girl from Philly who moved to bagel to Pride Rd. a
• 45:42
  bagel to Pride Rhode Island. Whenever we visit, she wants me
• 45:47
  to bring bagels, and I have to go into my Bronx local bagel
• 45:52
  store where if you asked one of the guys for a scoop bagel, they
• 45:55
  would not even respond and ask for a dozen 13 cinnamon Raisin
• 46:04
  bagels. And I have to announce very
• 46:07
  loudly, these are not for me. They're for a friend of mine who
• 46:12
  lives in Rhode Island. Because I know being in the
• 46:16
  Bronx, there will be people behind me like me, judging me.
• 46:21
  So I need to be sure no one thinks I'm eating these Pacaca
• 46:26
  bagels. Wow, wow.
• 46:31
  Strong, strong words, Rocco, Strong word.
• 46:34
  Thank you for giving me my moment.
• 46:36
  I don't even want to tell you about rainbow bagels because I
• 46:38
  feel like we're not going to get into that right now.
• 46:41
  But Willie, I imagine maybe Kvetcherichvel, you got
• 46:45
  something. I try to be a positive person.
• 46:51
  I was in Germany recently and I have just seen the most goyish
• 46:55
  of bagels I've ever seen in my life.
• 46:58
  Just fully pre made closed face like savory bagels talking about
• 47:04
  like, you know, like Turkey and lettuce.
• 47:07
  It's I just they never deserved us.
• 47:14
  So this is a Patrick Bell. Here this is I mean next that it
• 47:18
  happened Mel that it's over. No, I don't know.
• 47:22
  I guess I guess I think I don't like to date deep stuff cuz it's
• 47:26
  like as long as you as long as you pay for it, you can eat
• 47:27
  whatever you want. But I don't know I just I want
• 47:31
  to do a Vella just like when people try new stuff and my
• 47:34
  schiks a girlfriend just discovered chopped liver and
• 47:37
  cheap bug loves it so. We're very happy, thank you.
• 47:40
  Red flag. Amazing.
• 47:42
  Thank you. Liz, do you have?
• 47:45
  Anything. Yeah.
• 47:45
  I'm going in a different direction, everybody than the
• 47:48
  previous fetches, but I, I like them a lot.
• 47:51
  So Jeffrey and I, we love to find old menus.
• 47:55
  That's something that we love. We've done a lot of research to
• 47:59
  find old menus both from the Borscht Belt and also from old
• 48:02
  Jewish delis, and they're not as easy to find as you think.
• 48:05
  So I found two menus right before in preparation for this,
• 48:10
  and I wanted to share. Share them with you.
• 48:14
  I'm here. I'm gonna pass this down if
• 48:16
  anybody wants to look at. I got two of those, but one of
• 48:18
  them is a menu from the Concorde, okay.
• 48:22
  And it is in 1971. And this was really cool 'cause
• 48:26
  I've never seen this. It was the kids menu at the
• 48:30
  Concorde, which is so cool. The Concorde iconic Porsche Belt
• 48:34
  Hotel. And, and so I thought it was
• 48:38
  really fun to see. First of all, on the outside of
• 48:42
  this menu that I have printed here, there's all these little
• 48:45
  animals and all the sounds they make.
• 48:48
  So there's a picture of a cat and it says meow and a duck and
• 48:52
  it says quack and there's a butterfly.
• 48:54
  No sound at all. Weird.
• 48:55
  Or the. Grasshopper.
• 48:56
  Yeah, the Grasshopper. Silent.
• 48:58
  Unusually silent, but kosher. Kosher.
• 49:00
  So we've got. I just wanted to share this with
• 49:03
  all of you because it's so much fun to look at old menus.
• 49:05
  So if you were wondering what the kids ate at the Concorde for
• 49:10
  dinner in 1971, they got to have chilled South American honeydew
• 49:14
  melon as an appetizer. Love the origin.
• 49:18
  They're like it's a South American honeydew.
• 49:23
  Your relish course is of course dill Pickles.
• 49:27
  Then for your soup options you could have old fashioned Lima
• 49:30
  bean soup or clear broth on toss fancy French French on top and.
• 49:37
  It just means in a cup. In a cup, Just in a cup.
• 49:41
  And one of the things about these menus is they're always
• 49:42
  trying to make it a little more elevated.
• 49:44
  Just wait till you get to the chef recommends, which is our
• 49:46
  next kids section. I'm reminding you this is the
• 49:48
  children's menu in the children's dining room, which is
• 49:51
  open for dinner from six to seven, by the way, says it right
• 49:55
  here. The chef recommends A succulent
• 49:58
  half spring chicken, Polynesian style on a bed of fluffy rice.
• 50:03
  It's delicious but I think it might just be chicken Nuggets.
• 50:07
  Personally I think it might be right.
• 50:09
  You could also have a roast sauteed pab sliver, perhaps with
• 50:13
  smothered onions in your kids. Menu or kids?
• 50:16
  Or are they being punished? Yeah, or maybe you want a
• 50:19
  Chinese style spaghetti with simmered chicken strips I would
• 50:23
  eat. So I just want to say this is an
• 50:25
  amazing menu for kids. It's completely unclear what my
• 50:29
  child would eat if sitting seated at this table, but I do
• 50:32
  think she would like the drawings here, so check it out.
• 50:35
  So we'll put it over here at our merch table afterward if anybody
• 50:37
  wants to see it. So, OK, well, listen, we had
• 50:41
  shares, we had veches and I'm gonna bring the positivity since
• 50:44
  really could not I have a kvell. And I will say this is the third
• 50:50
  year at the Borscht Belfest. And every year that I have come
• 50:54
  up, I get to go visit our friends that are actually here,
• 50:58
  David, Rebecca and Wolf, who they spend the summers at one of
• 51:03
  the last two bungalow colonies, Rosemarins.
• 51:06
  It's in Monroe, NY. So it's outside of the sour
• 51:08
  cream Sierras, outside of the Borscht Belt.
• 51:10
  But it's it's it's in the spirit of it like you wouldn't believe
• 51:14
  they are up there with all these other families.
• 51:16
  And it's a multi generational place.
• 51:19
  There's there's the elders of the community, there's a lake,
• 51:22
  there's a pool. I went picking wine berries
• 51:25
  yesterday on our way down to the lake where we swam across the
• 51:29
  lake together. I know you've spent time, Liz,
• 51:32
  at this particular bungalow as well.
• 51:34
  We cooked a light summer cold borscht and we ate it outside
• 51:41
  and gave borscht to our neighbors.
• 51:43
  It was one of the most beautiful things.
• 51:45
  And every year because of this festival, I get to have this
• 51:48
  experience, visit these friends, see how they are.
• 51:52
  They're the and the best cooks of this entire bungalow colony.
• 51:56
  So and. There's someone's going to come
• 51:57
  for you for that. They are making like jams and
• 52:01
  Pickles and going to farms and just eating so well.
• 52:05
  And so I am just so grateful that we're remembering this
• 52:09
  culture, we're commemorating it in this way.
• 52:11
  We're telling these stories and then I get to live it.
• 52:14
  And, and so for those who have not been Rosemary's is it's
• 52:17
  worthwhile. It's a really special place.
• 52:19
  I want to thank my hosts every year who find a bungalow for me
• 52:23
  to stay and and thank you to you all for like helping bring this
• 52:27
  this story to life of this region.
• 52:30
  And thank you for joining us at Meet Me at the Deli.
• 52:33
  Thank you so much. We want to give an official that
• 52:37
  shout out to the Borscht Belt Festival, the Borscht Belt
• 52:40
  Museum for hosting this live podcast taping of Meet Me at the
• 52:43
  Deli. And let's give a shout out to
• 52:45
  our guests, Dan, Willie and Rocco for their incredible
• 52:49
  expertise. Thank you.
• 52:51
  Now if you did not get your question answered, please find
• 52:55
  us gefilteria. We have DM us.
• 52:59
  We have a form, we have a website.
• 53:02
  You can also find it on Hebe media.
• 53:04
  We will get it to Gefilteria. Please do let us know.
• 53:08
  We want to know your questions. You might just hear it on air.
• 53:11
  Our show comes out every other week on Thursdays.
• 53:14
  You can also e-mail us podcast at gefilteria.com and you will
• 53:20
  be able to get your question in the mix.
• 53:24
  And guess what? This show will be live in a
• 53:26
  couple of weeks on the feed. So subscribe to meet me at the
• 53:29
  deli. This show was produced by
• 53:32
  Felicia Rice right here. Shout out to Felicia Rice and to
• 53:37
  Heed Media. We also want to shout out our
• 53:39
  associate producer, Pasha Taub. Thank you so much for that.
• 53:43
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• 53:46
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• 53:58
  however you listen to podcasts. I tell you, we have a fun time.
• 54:02
  It's a good time. And.
• 54:05
  Yeah, So we will be hanging out here for a few minutes, and
• 54:08
  here's what we have to say. Take our answers out into your
• 54:11
  life. Bring us back the leftovers.
• 54:14
  Thank you all so much. Thank you.
• 54:16
  Thank you. This has been a podcast by Hebe
• 54:21
  Media.