MEMORIES ON RYE

Skirball’s exhibition on Jewish delicatessens whets the appetite for learning about the endurance of the nation’s most nostalgic cuisine.

More than a place to get a meal, the Jewish deli is a community forged in food. In May 2022, the Skirball opened its original exhibition “I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli, organized largely with objects drawn from the Skirball Museum’s own permanent collection. Now touring museums around the country, the exhibition explores how Jewish delis continue to reflect their century-old roots in Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant experiences even as they evolve to fit the needs and tastes of new generations.

Just as delis themselves became so much more than the food they served, the exhibition has come to serve as a collection point for thousands of memories of family and food. Waitstaff and customers become like extended family—knowing each other’s habits and preferences, creating special rituals of joy and care. Kaye Coleman, a Nate ‘n Al’s waitress featured in the exhibition, was known for many things—among them, being TV and radio host Larry King’s favorite waitress. One visitor remembered: sound bites

The Jewish Deli begins with extraordinary archival footage, shot on an early Edison camera, on a street in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1900. Like so many American immigrant communities before and after, Ashkenazi Jews coming from Central and Eastern Europe during this period bought and sold life’s necessities in the street. This footage captures the commerce

Bottom in action: push carts line the sidewalks, the streets are busy with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages, and policemen walk towards the camera, swinging their batons, and forcing the street vendors to move. From those carts and barrels, and from new Jewish immigrants’ demand for kosher food, was born Jewish deli cuisine. Think of your favorite order at the deli. What is the taste? Salty? Sweet? Pickled? Cured? These are the tastes of safely preserving food in the street, without access to refrigeration.