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10/25/2007 Archived Entry: "Jewish Baltimore"

It has been a day at sea on the Seabourn Pride. We’re on our way from Norfolk, Virginia, to Charleston, South Carolina. The weather was stormy last night and the rock and roll of the ship did in quite a few passengers. I gave my New York City Food lecture this morning and although I had a very nice turnout, it would have been better if there weren’t so many passengers in their staterooms feeling ill. The water is fairly calm right now, at about 6 p.m. There’s a rainbow in the sky. But the ship is still moving more than we would like it. I wonder how many people will show up for dinner. It’s a black-tie evening featuring chef Markus Gerber’s tasting menu.

I didn’t do any touring in Norfolk. I stayed on board and transcribed recipes and notes from my nearly three months in Italy – all grist for the Big Book of Southern Italian Food & Wine. But I haven’t told you about my little Jewish experience in Baltimore yet.

I went to Attman’s, the delicatessen on Lombard St. that I had been tipped off about a couple of weeks ago. Sure enough, as I was told, they have great salami. They have their own label, but I tasted another salami that was quite similar but I thought had the edge over the house brand. Although the counterman said they are the same, Saval kosher beef salami is slightly spicier, slightly fatter. I was a looking for a fatty, spicy salami. My complaint is that kosher beef salami has become too lean and bland. I bought a whole, five-pounder. The label says it is “distributed by Saval Foodservice, Elkridge, MD.” Now I have to find out who really makes it. Distributed means distributed not manufactured or produced. And I want to know under what other labels it might be sold, and where and if I can buy it in New York metro. Now I have to figure out what I am going to do with five pounds of salami. A good, simple salami sandwich on seeded rye with deli mustard will be a great treat. And, as mentioned in my last letter, I can’t wait to make salami and eggs with salami fat enough to render some lubrication to fry the eggs. Maybe I’ll have a salami party!

I also tried Attman’s pastrami, corned beef, and chopped liver. The menu says it sells “authentic New York delicatessen (only better).” I hate to admit it, because I am such a New York chauvinist, but Attman’s is right. Their meats are better than almost any deli you can get in New York these days. In fact, I can’t think of better pastrami, except at Katz’s and Junior’s. Attman’s is well-spiced, lightly smoked, and incredibly succulent and tender without being too fatty. You’ve gotta have some streaks of fat. I have to laugh when people complain that pastrami is too fatty. It’s made from plate beef, also called navel, which is equivalent to bacon. Fat is part of the attraction, a good part. The corned beef, of course brisket, was equally succulent, not terribly salty, great flavor, sliced paper thin. And since the Second Avenue Deli closed, I haven’t had such good chopped liver – well, except for my own homemade, if I say so myself.

I spoke to Earl Oppel. He looked like the boss so I asked him if he was Mr. Attman. “As close as you’re going to get,” said Earl. He’s now the “chief of operations,” and he has been working at the deli since 1973, when, judging by the picture of him on the wall behind the counter, he was in his 20s. Earl says the pastrami and corned beef are made for them – to Attman’s specifications – by a New York-based processor. He wouldn’t tell me who. Understandable. The deli is unbelievably popular. I arrived before noon and seated myself in the Kibbutz Room, the side room with tables. The main deli is just a long counter displaying the food. Besides meats, there are all the usual salads, and a few decidedly non-kosher items – trayf – like crab cakes, a Maryland specialty. They have Coddies, too, which one might suppose are cod cakes but it has been generation sisnce they have had cod, salt cod, in them. I went to the University of Maryland in the 1960s. Even then I remember Coddies as fried potato cakes seasoned with Old Bay seasoning, the hot mixed spice used for crab cakes.

When I arrived before lunch, the deli was empty. The only other people were some transplanted Baltimorians, a retired couple visiting from Florida. When I returned an hour later, at 12:30, to pick up my salami, there was a line for sandwiches from the front door to the rear of the deli, then back to the front door. Locals wait for more than a half hour, on their lunch hour, to get a sandwich here. And you don’t have to be Jewish. There were as many black faces as Yiddishe kops (that’s Jewish heads).

Attman’s has been in business since 1915 and it used to be just one of several Jewish delis on Lombard St., which was called Corned Beef Row. This was Baltimore’s Jewish and Italian immigrant neighborhood. In fact, down the block and across the street from Attman’s are the only other landmarks from that era. The neo-classic Lloyd Street Synagogue, built in 1845, is the third oldest synagogue in the country. B’nai Israel Synagogue was built in 1876 in grand Moorish Revival style. Along with the synagogues is the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Lombard St. is just a few blocks east of Baltimore’s “Inner Harbor,” the rejuvenated port area that is home to too many chain restaurants and chain stores, plus office buildings, the convention center, hotels, and other tourist facilities. The old immigrant street has also been gentrified, but I think in a much nicer way. The old former immigrant slum buildings have been turned into very attractive homes. And where later-day high-rise public housing stood, buildings that replaced the worst of the slums and then became slums themselves, there are now new townhouse-style condominiums. What I didn’t see where any stores to service this new community. Where Lombard St. used to be a bustling commercial strip servicing the teaming immigrant community, there are only residential buildings now. Except for Attman’s!

Most unfortunately, I didn’t get in to see the synagogues. You need a tour guide for that and the tour guide wasn’t going to show up until too late for me to wait. I did, however, see the current exhibit at the museum, “Voices of Lombard Street: A Century of Change in East Baltimore.” It explains through photographs, printed oral history, narration, and exhibits, what this old Jewish and Italian ghetto was like. Very nice!