We were visiting NYC, had just devoured a huge lunch at a Moroccan cafe but it didn't matter. I was full but it didn't register.
"One hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard please."
In the brightly lit room, the walls plastered with 8x10 photos of celebrities, we managed to find an empty table. I offered to let Griffin and Rachael sample the treat first but they declined. Then I took a bite, savoring the crispy skin and the chewy meat inside. What exactly the meat consisted of I didn't know except that it came from various parts of a cow. It tasted exactly the way I remembered and I was transported back in time.
In middle school, Saturday mornings meant going to "town" where we walked up and down Middle Neck Road in groups of four or five girls with our allowance money in our pockets. This being Great Neck, our allowances were generous enough to cover both lunch and a visit to the candy store. Lunch usually meant Kensington Deli.
Dimly illuminated and dingy, the narrow room had booths on one side and a lunch counter on the other. It smelled like sweaty kids and hot pastrami. A lanky man with a permanent toothpick in his mouth tended to us. He had unlimited patience and I wondered if any of us could make him crack. "What do you want?" he said.
There were many choices: brisket, tongue, roast beef, turkey, chopped liver, tuna salad. Perhaps the least interesting item was kosher franks. Every time we went through the same dialogue of indecision: "What are you having? I don't know..what do you want?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either. What are you ordering?"
After this routine, I always ended up with the same lunch: two hot dogs with sauerkraut and mustard and a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda. Sometimes one of us splurged on a knish and cut it into fourths. The pleasure from this meal was more than eating salty franks and drinking a sugary soda. It was being a thirteen year old kid and giggling with girl friends who had mouths full of shiny braces, glittery lip gloss and pimply skin. It was pom-pom socks and Tretorn sneakers. It was serious questions: "Who is cuter; Jimmy Connors or Bjorn Borg?"
"Who has B.O.?"
"Who likes Corey Miller?"(class president)
"Who shaves their legs?"
"Have you heard that they found rat eggs in Bubble Yum? It is so true! I swear!"
Maybe this is why Griffin and Rachael let me taste the Katz's hot dog first, they could see me morphing into my thirteen year old self which either fascinated or frightened them. When Rachael finally took a bite, she looked disappointed. "It just tastes like a regular hot dog," she said.
Maybe she was right, but for me it was so much more.
Katz's Delicatessen
205 E. Houston St.
New York, New York
Kensington Kosher Deli
27 Middle Neck Road
Great Neck, NY
I want one!
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