Kenny and Zuke save the deli

It’s easy to be a fan of Portland’s Kenny and Zuke’s – what’s not to like about thick cut house-smoked pastrami, fresh baked bagels, and sundry other masterfully crafted deli classics?

[For those readers unfortunate enough not to have visited Kenny and Zuke’s, check out these photos for a mere inkling of what you’re missing.]

Writer David Sax is a fan too, as he demonstrates in a recent Gourmet story, Meet the New Deli. I blogged about the article previously: Gourmet Magazine visits Portland again, tries the pastrami at Kenny and Zuke’s.

As Extramsg explained in a comment on that post, David Sax also has a new book out called Save the Deli, in which he highlights the best delis across the country and laments their disappearance.

Extramsg also pointed out Kenny and Zuke’s opened after the book was mostly written, so though it doesn’t make the book, it’s exactly what David Sax had been wishing for, as was evident in the aforementioned Gourmet magazine article.

Which brings me to an interview with David Sax by Dana Joy Altman posted on the Huffington Post yesterday; David Sax has even more nice things to say about Portland’s favorite new-style Jewish deli:

The most interesting one I saw is Kenny & Zuke’s out of Portland, Oregon. It’s two guys, one was a food blogger, the other one owned a restaurant. One said to the other, “Hey, there’s no good pastrami in Portland, whaddya say we make a good pastrami and sell it at the farmers’ market and see if it sells.” So they did and it sold out in ten minutes. The next week they came back with twice the amount of pastrami and they sold out in twenty minutes. They were smoking it in a barbecue smoker and curing it in barrels. So, then they started to do a Deli Brunch at his restaurant and it got so big they decided to do it full time.

They opened up their deli two years ago and it’s doing incredibly well. They bake their own bread and bagels every morning in house, they smoke their own pastrami in a smoker with oak that they split with an axe in the basement and even though Kenny is from New York, they don’t call themselves a New York-style deli. They’re a Jewish delicatessen.

Read the rest of the interview at the Huffington Post: Real Food Rehab: Save The Deli.

You can follow David Sax’s book tour (he’s blogging his adventures) at the Save the Deli website. And of course Save the Deli is available at Powell’s and at the library.