Would you believe it’s nearly impossible to get a good deli sandwich where I live?  It’s true!  I live in Israel, the Jewish Capital of the world, and no good deli.  The closest thing I can find to a pastrami on rye is when I buy the sandwich meat myself and place it on bread I bought at a bakery and eat it from the comfort of my apartment.

I am going to ignore the new WHO study on deli meat as I write this post, and I would suggest you do the same.  If you want to concentrate on it after you have finished reading, please feel free.  But for this blog post, let’s pretend it doesn’t exist.  Pastrami, corned beef and chopped liver sandwiches are just so damn good.

I began to ask myself, why no good deli?  Ok, I do live in a city that consists mainly of Sephardic Jews (and Ultra Orthodox), but still, there should be something that resembles Gottleib’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or Rubin’s in Brookline, MA, or any of the “kosher style” deli’s that I used to eat at before becoming strictly kosher?  Nothing.  Gornisht.

Shwarma (a favorite) is on practically every street corner, as is falafel, schnitzel, pizza and fresh baked bread.  Again, no deli. The so called “Jewish food” that I grew up on only seems to exist here in my memory or in the far reaches of this country that I have yet to explore.

Today, while taking a long walk around town, I played tourist and asked a few Israelis where I could find good deli here in Ashdod.  They didn’t know of any restaurants that served deli, but they sure had fond memories of it from when they visited the US. I then asked  “why no deli”, and most explained to me that it’s not Israeli food.  It wouldn’t work here.

So although “Jewish,” deli doesn’t seem to be Israeli.  My question for my next walk, “what is Israeli”?