JEWISH DELIGHTS
Nosh serves an array of traditional deli foods
While Marilyn Monroe was married to playwright Arthur Miller, so the story goes, she was served matzo ball soup twice in a row, causing her to wonder, “Don’t you people eat any other part of the matzo?”
For those who share the actress’s bewilderment about East European Jewish cuisine, Nosh may be your delicatessen portal, the place to sensitize your palate to flavors that date to the Middle Ages and are largely an amalgamation of peasant food traditions of Germany, Hungary, Poland, Alsace-Lorraine and Sicily.
With ingenuity and centuries of refinement, shtetl-dwellers transformed preservation techniques of smoking, drying, salting and pickling of available foodstuffs into an art.
To compare delis to synagogues, Nosh is Reform. It needs a subtitle to explain itself, according to this Jew who wandered all the way to the Rio Grande, doing what Jews have always done, adapting to the local culture to survive.
If you walk into Katz’s, the archetypical New York Jewish deli where the décor includes salamis swinging from the ceiling, the sandwiches tower a half-foot high, and the corned beef is cured for 30 days, you have boarded the Mother Ship. Organic granola, paleo baked goods, and noodle kugel ($3.75) topped with a butterball a la Nob Hill’s Nosh are not to be found. However, paleo or glutenfree bread ($10) cookies and brownies ($19.50 a dozen) are appreciated in Albuquerque, where bakeries are few.
Nosh’s plain kugel may be enhanced by frying and serving it with a side of maple syrup ($5.25) (not that there’s anything wrong with that); however, traditional kugel is sweetened with raisins, apples, cinnamon, vanilla and sugar in the mix.
What Nosh lacks: Schmaltz, kishka (sausagetype fare favored by grandfathers and washed down with a shot of schnapps), kasha varnishkes (roasted buckwheat with bow tie pasta), kreplach (Jewish wontons), a bowl of sour tomatoes on the table, pickled herring, gefilte fish, and gribenes, crunchy renderings of chicken fat (see schmaltz, above) best thought of as Jewish chicharrones,
What Nosh has: pastrami and corned beef sandwiches ($11.25) or pastrami with scrambled eggs ($10.25), chopped liver ($7.25), bagels and house-baked bialys, ($1.25 each) wonderful sweet, baked goods like babka ($3.75), rugelach (50 cents) and challah ($6) (best ordered in advance for Friday), classic Ruben sandwiches ($12.25), and best of all, silky, smoky lox. If you crave lox and bagels served with cream cheese, capers and thin sliced red onion ($11.25), plan to arrive early for weekend breakfast as they can run out. The blintzes (thin
pancakes stuffed with sweet, creamy cheese), served in berry compote, are tasty but about half the size of a true blintz, and at $8.95, a bit pricey.
My dining companion, whose grandparents ran a deli in north Jersey, approved of the flavor of the chopped liver, while she critiqued its smooth, processed texture. She reminisced about her grandmother’s hand chopper and wooden bowl. With the addition of chopped egg, onion and schmaltz, that chopper gave the dish its old school crumbly texture.
Nosh offers a deal on a weekday lunch special: a half sandwich and soup – your matzo ball is waiting – with choice of side for $11.25. And, breakfast is served all day.
The service was a bit stumbling, with help that was new, untrained or unfamiliar with the menu. No guiding hand was in evidence during my visits.
Still, Nosh is manna in the desert. But as Jewish souls will, they depart still searching for the Promised Land, an authentic Kosher deli, with a pickle barrel out front.