2nd Avenue Deli

New York is famous for its delicatessens or delis for short. Basically delis are restaurants which usually offer a wide-ranging sandwich menu but also standard American home-cooked food such as meatballs and beef brisket. Delis can come from a variety of cultural traditions - e.g. Jewish delis which offer kosher food. I always wanted to visit a deli for a meal but was usually frightened off by the massive amount of food the restaurant throws on your plate. Mile-high sandwich, anyone? The image of delicatessens is also deeply imbedded into my psyche through American pop culture and TV such as Seinfeld (much of the characters could be found in Tom's Delicatessen in the West 100 St).

One of the most interesting delis that I always wanted to try is 2nd Avenue Deli which is a kosher delicatessen. Although it is called 2nd Avenue Deli, it is not at 2nd Avenue (think it had to move due to rent dispute). It was recognised by Zagat as the best kosher deli in New York. Yay! The deli's specialties include kosher food such as matzoh ball soup, knishes, gefilte fish and cholent.

By the way, kosher food is food in accordance with Jewish laws. The Jewish laws on kosher food are numerous and complicated but do you know that they can only eat meat from mammals that both chew their cud and have cloven hooves e.g. cows? The mammals must also be slaughtered in a certain fashion. Sounds like halal food? Actually, there is an ongoing debate now whether Muslims can take kosher food. Both halah and kosher laws do not accept pork. Cows are accepted under both laws. The problem is alcohol. Kosher laws generally allow any sort of alcohol but Muslims are not supposed to drink.

But enough of intellectual hee-haw over halal and kosher food. As long as the food is excellent, it doesn't matter which religion and culture it belongs to. I rounded up the whole office and basically browbeat all of them like a bunch of sheeps and herded them to the 2nd Avenue Deli.

My table ordered the sandwich medley. What it means is basically they serve you a platter of all sorts of meat e.g. roast beef, corned beef, pastrami, salami, beef tongue and turkey breast. They give you a mountain of bread to eat the meat with. My personal favourite is the beef tongue. The tongue is seriously, seriously good. Most cooks will tell you that the essence of a cow is in the tongue. They are right.

Looks good, isn't it?

We also ordered chicken in a pot and roast beef. The chicken in a pot is basically chicken soup. Which is good but of course, cannot compare to our classic Chinese herbal black chicken soup. God, I miss them in New York.

Potato pancakes. So-so.

Chocolate Babka. Looks ok but disappointing really.

And after the food, the waitress served us shot glasses filled with chocolate soda. Taste bloody awful really. But it was really fun for all of us as we did the yum-seng in the Deli. Everyone was looking at us funny. The waitress asked me what we were cheering for and I quipped that we were Singaporean Jews and it was a Singapore Jewish after-dinner tradition. She smiled and go ahh. I hoped she didn't really believe me!

Anyway, the overall experience is excellent. The service is good, the price is reasonable and the entree (sandwich medley) is to die for.