Mile End deli to open… in Brooklyn

Notes on the Mile End deli to open in Brooklyn this month: I like the menu detail of 10 cents extra for no mustard (as at Wilensky’s) but “beer and wine availability” isn’t quite in the spirit. (I’ve sure I’ve posted before about overhearing a waiter at Schwartz’s telling a well-dressed dowager “You want wine, we’ve got cherry coke. You want beer, we’ve got ginger ale.”)

Andy Riga puts this square in the theme of competition between us and New York over deli-ish things. Thing is this: journalists make copy about comparisons you can’t actually make. People have tried to compare New York and Montreal bagels, Schwartz’s and Katz’s smoked meat. But there’s simply no practical way to have these things in their optimum condition on the same table at the same time. I’d love to have a taste test among the city’s best espresso, but even here in one city you can’t bring together shots from the Caffe Italia, the Olimpico, the Gentile and the Cafe Milano at the same time. You rely on memory, and memory is notoriously shifty and prone to confabulation.

Anyway, thank goodness it isn’t really a competition. We have some good things, and so do they. We should be content to enjoy those things in their own place in their own good time.