My foodie life began at age 12. After my parents divorced, I took over cooking two nights a week for myself and my two brothers. My first family dish was a Salisbury Steak TV dinner, which I managed to overthink. I had never noticed before that the oven had two settings: Broil, and Bake. I picked Broil, because you broil a steak, right? You don’t bake it. You bake a cake.
Eventually, we figured it out. We pulled the foil off the meat and broiled it that way. The little triangle of string beans stayed cold, but we had plenty of salami and saltine crackers.
A few months later, I was searching around in cupboards and found the Joy of Cooking. It contained detailed instructions for making every dish in the known universe, including my favorite: pot roast. I hadn’t known such a thing even existed! I gave my dad the ingredients list and to his great credit, he played along and did the shopping. It came out perfect.
Sooner or later, I . . .
- Got my first food service job cleaning out an abandoned restaurant and helping a guy named Ira turn it into a deli. It later became a cocktail lounge.
- Became Director of Marketing for a tiny and long-forgotten restaurant management company. We built a couple of theme dinner houses that did OK, but failed to materialize into the chain the owner envisioned.
- Started a private restaurant marketing and food consultancy in the greater New Haven, CT area. We are now in the Seventies; the era of Cold Pasta Salads – an historic food period sandwiched between the Stromboli and the Pestozoic.
- Did a little food writing for the New Haven Advocate and Connecticut Magazine, both amazingly still around. My fellow food writer at the time was a great guy named Mark Bittman. He hung in there and ran with it, evidently.
- Moved to California. Built, ran and sold a couple of fast-food restaurants in a mall in Century City, CA.
- Developed Computer Science envy.
- Patented the first restaurant point of sale system that visualized actual tables and their ordering status. This was before Windows had built-in networking, people! In fact it was way too early to start such a thing and it crumbled, along with my partner’s patience and cash.
- Got into all kinds of increasingly normal and normally lucrative occupations.
- Started an ancient food blog with maybe three pictures and no interactivity, which I got tired of updating by hand, in HTML and .NET. But which had three thousand followers at the time, thanks guys! It was called Eating Away.
- Wound up as a Technology Architect for a media company, helping make high-rise elevators throughout the US and Canada safe for digital advertising.
- And now here we are – one full round trip into the Circle of Deli Life.
And Dear Eaters, I will add one thing – I have an expansive definition of deli. It certainly doesn’t have be Jewish, or kosher. It’s basically the delicious, comforting, mouth-filling food you lit into as a kid, whatever kind of kid you were. It’s the food you and your grandpa went out to buy on a weekend morning, or the little things your mom did that made food magically better at your house than anyone else’s.
Deli is family, even if you’re eating alone. Welcome to mine.