20 Foods You'll Commonly Find At A Jewish Deli

As the late Jonathan Gold once said, "The deli is where you go to be Jewish." Jewish delicatessens in America are an institution and a living testament to the history of Eastern European Ashkenazi communities who immigrated primarily to escape religious persecution and genocide, making the U.S. their home and adapting their foods to suit a new life and available resources.

While the fixtures of the Jewish deli are changing to accommodate tastes, other cultural influences, customer demands, and resources, there are some classics you can count on being present. They're like part of the furniture, even if only to inspire other dishes to come from them. These popular items were once considered innovative in their own time, leading us to believe the future is still bright for the Jewish deli. Here are some popular, crowd-pleasing dishes you're bound to find on your next visit to your local Jewish deli.

The origins of blintzes, a decedent rolled crepe found in Ashkenazi cuisine, are a bit murky. Though it isn't a complete certainty, they most likely originated in Hungary. Like many other Ashkenazi dishes, Blintzes can be commonly found in many Jewish-style delis across the U.S.

For those who've never had the pleasure of partaking, blitzes are the French crepe's slightly thicker-skinned Jewish cousin. Where crepes can be filled with either sweet or savory ingredients, blitzes on the deli menu are primarily sweet, with either a sweet farmer's cheese or cheese and fruit filling wrapped in a wheat-based pastry browned in butter and topped with berries and sour cream. Blintzes, alongside other dairy-based treats like cheesecake, are a customary part of the springtime celebration of Shavuot.

You never need an excuse, a holiday, or a heartbreak to justify tucking into a bowl of comforting matzoh ball soup. The dish, however, is a beloved part of the ritualized eating ceremony known as the Passover seder; the holiday commemorates the exodus of the Jewish people from enslavement in Egypt through storytelling and eating rituals.

Traditionally made from matzoh meal, eggs, and schmaltz (or chicken fat) to form round dumplings called knoedel (German), knoedela (Polish), kneidlach (Yiddish), or matzoh balls that come bobbing in a bowl of rich golden-hued broth. Though there's a bit of a debate as to texture preference, fluffy versus dense (we're team fluffy), there's a ball for everyone waiting for your coast to coast, from Katz's to Langer's to Larder and everywhere in between.

When it comes to terminology in the Jewish deli, whitefish has become somewhat of a catch-all term for the varieties of smoked or cured freshwater fish. The fish is cured, often smoked, and served cold and alongside bagels and cream cheese. These kinds of foods are also referred to as "appetizing," meaning that they fall under the fish and milk category rather than meat, as the two must be separated according to Kosher law.

Unlike the Kosher-style delis that have become most prevalent and offer both fish and meat, Jewish eateries serving highly religious communities need to specialize in either appetizing or delicatessens, but not both, in order to adhere to Kosher law. A popular example that manages to cross cultural lines while still upholding kosher laws is Russ & Daughters, which specializes in appetizing including smoked white fish, cured salmon, pickled herring, and more.

If you are reading this article, you are likely already very familiar with what a quality bagel looks like. The trick to creating the perfect bagel comes from the multi-step process of treating the dough by first boiling and then baking the product, creating a textural wonderland of chewy-meets-crusty in the process.

This much-loved food item used to be carted around the New York City streets, in particular the Lower East Side, on pieces of string or poles (and, yes, there is a difference between beigels and bagels). This method of carry makes good sense when considering the name 'bagel' has morphed over time from the Yiddish word beygl, meaning bracelet or ring, becoming beigel, to its current form. There are numerous flavors from which to choose, including poppyseed, onion, mishmosh (everything) sesame, salt, and cinnamon raisin, to name just a few.

Tongue, considered offal or organ meat, is embraced by a variety of communities, from Jewish immigrants in New York City to communities across Mexico. They have separately taken an undesirable and challenging part of the cow and turned it into a cultural and culinary staple that displays so perfectly the idea of waste-free cooking, even if out of necessity.

Cooking a tongue is a time-consuming and laborious task, as several layers must first be removed, often through boiling. The meat is then braised to make it soft and succulent. Tongue often comes pickled or cured, served in a sandwich. Katz's Delicatessen in New York City serves two different cuts: center and tip, cold between two slices of bread of your choice. Others like Langer's offer a hot option, as well. No matter how you slice it, the tongue is a labor of love and a classic deli item.

While most people associate gefilte fish with Jewish holidays like Passover, it can and should be eaten year-round. The name means "stuffed" in Yiddish, referring to the whole fish stuffed with a mixture of fish, carrots, onions, and spices before being baked. Today, the whole fish is absent from the recipe, and the stuffing mixture now makes up the dish, traditionally served alongside grated horseradish, picked beetroot, or chrain (which is a combination of the two).

Though gefilte fish was first popularized by the Catholic rather than the Jewish community as the perfect dish for Lent, it has undoubtedly created a home for itself at the Jewish deli and dinner table. Delis around the country, like Larder in Cleveland, Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, and Wexler's in Los Angeles, are making their own versions of it.

Browse any list of side dishes on any Jewish deli's menu, and you are likely to spot at least one (if not several), types of kugel offered, including potato, vegetable, and lokshen (meaning noodle). Depending on the ingredients, different varieties of kugel will feature different flavors. For instance, though savory examples do exist, noodle kugels tend to favor sweet ingredients through their usage of fruits like raisins or pineapple alongside a binding of dairy and eggs. Potato and other vegetable-based kugels, however, tend to feature more savory flavors.

Kugels are another perfect example of how food travels alongside cultures, with lokshen kugel being adapted by Jewish communities traveling through Italy and parts of Asia and onto the U.S., leaving some foods behind and picking up others along the way. No matter what kind of kugel is on offer, you can never go wrong by ordering it.

The Jewish deli is a place of optimism. How do we know? Just glancing at the dessert menu points to copious amounts of hope that diners will somehow have the appetite to manage an overstuffed sandwich or piled-high bagel and still have room for dessert. If that isn't an example of optimism at its finest, we don't know what is.

That said, there is nothing quite like the siren call of a wedge of freshly baked New York-style cheesecake. Once known to have been the food of athletes at the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C.E., the pastry is fortified with copious amounts of dairy, perfect for celebrating Shavuot. Though cheesecake seems more likely to induce a Netflix marathon than the running kind, we'd happily entertain any excuse to order it.

You'd be hard-pressed to turn up at any Jewish deli or bakery in New York City, and across the U.S. for that matter, and not rest your eyes upon the two-toned black and white cookie, incorporating two of the most popular flavors: chocolate and vanilla. The black and white cookie was first recorded as a product of Glaser's Bake Shop as early as 1902, now known for its cake-like base and shiny frosting.

Though now a part of popular culture, with the black and white featuring in Seinfeld alongside other New York institutions and Jewish bakery classics like babka, black and whites are by and largely unique to the American Jewish deli and bakery experience. There is much less expectation of finding them lining the shelves of the bakery case in other Jewish establishments around the world.

Dumpling devotees of all kinds should remember the word "kreplach" for their next visit to the Jewish deli. Though perhaps one of the lesser-known items amongst non-Jewish communities, kreplach is a labor of love that showcases a slightly thicker than the wonton-style outer casing and a mixture of ground beef or chicken and sautéed onion filling. Once filled and closed, the dumplings are boiled in soup or deep-fried until crispy.

Like other dishes which require a significant amount of work, kreplach is often reserved for special occasions and holidays, like Yom Kippur, as part of the breakfast meal. However, for those who want to eat kreplach but don't want to spend hours hunched over the kitchen counter rolling, filling, and folding the dough, a trip to the Jewish deli is in order. This dark horse order is one of the most underrated and, frankly, one of our favorites when seeking out the taste of homemade comfort foods.

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