The Road Course: Volume 1 - Kenny & Ziggy's Deli in Houston, Texas

Every road trip, I'll pick a restaurant in the host city or thereabouts to write up. This week - Kenny & Ziggy's Deli in Houston.

Finding the country's best New York-style Jewish deli in Houston is like finding the country's best pizza joint in Tulsa, the best barbecue spot in Seattle, the best pad thai in Pensacola.

The best New York deli belongs among the hustle and bustle of Broadway, under the bright lights, three doors down from a place where Vic will sell you two solid gold watches for $40, and he swears, they're real. It does not belong among the rolling sagebrush and cacti, among 10-gallon hats and certainly not among y'all.

Kreplach is not supposed to be ordered with a twang; it's kreplach, not craplock, and you're supposed to spit from the back of your throat when you say it.

So to find Kenny & Ziggy's Deli in a strip mall in West Houston, nestled next to a Sports Authority and down the row from a DWS, is a bit jarring.

But here is Ziggy Gruber, doing his best impression of Oliver Platt mixed with your grandmother.

A third generation deliman, a guy who oozes schmalz and schvitzes chopped liver, Gruber and partners Lenny and Kenny Friedman brought authentic deli to Houston in 1999, 72 years after his grandfather Max and brothers-in-law Morris and Izzy opened the Rialto in New York City. Later, Gruber's father, Eugene, opened Genard's on Madison Ave. And eventually, they passed down their knowledge to their grandson.

It was his turn. He was 10.

"In New York City, the best babysitter is the deli," Gruber said. "I'd sit there and watch, and when I was 10, my grandfather said, "It's time for you to make a living."

By 12, Gruber knew his calling. But at 15, he lost his grandfather, his best friend, "the sweetest man who ever lived," and he took it harshly.

During a trip to London with his English mother, Gruber found out a cousin was enrolled in culinary school. Only problem, Gruber was 15; he didn't have a high school diploma. Gruber met with the school administrators, asked, 'What if I make a sizable donation?' and was accepted soon after. He finished the top of his class.

"I can take you to my house and cook you the best French dinner you'll ever have," Gruber said. "I've worked at restaurants, I've been a pastry chef. But this...this is what I was meant to do."

A few years in England suited him just fine, but he longed to return to New York, and upon his return, he took over the Cresthill Kosher Deli in Spring Valley, NY. After opening and operating Ziggy G's on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, Gruber was eventually called to Houston. Gruber had resuscitated delis in New York and Los Angeles, but this was a challenge. Ninety percent of new restaurants fail, and all of those owners have an idea that they consider a cash cow. Here Ziggy was bringing farfalle and kugel to a place where they smother their steak in cheese and onions, where the chicken is friend thrice, where it's about grits, not gristle.

It was an overnight success.

"We wanted a soft opening," Gruber said. "I said look, 'Let's not tell anyone, we'll do it nice an easy. That didn't work. After a half an hour, everyone was, 'They're open, they're open, they're open.' When the Jewish community came in here, the line started, and the line's been busy ever since."

Not when the first sight is a dessert carousel that borders on criminal, the smell enough to cause a toothache; not when the large staff - for whom Gruber serves as "psychologist, friend, father, loan officer and bail bondsman" - brings out a bowl of goulash that smells like it comes straight from Budapest; not with stuffed cabbage that harkens back to the old country, any old country.
But the food at Kenny & Ziggy's isn't what makes you want to come back later in the same day.

It's the feeling of being in two places at once, in a New York City deli where Groucho Marx and Henny Youngman are going to march right in, and right in your grandmother's kitchen.

"Everyone says how do you like living in Houston - I say, to me I'm in New York every single day," Gruber said. "'How can you say that?' Well, I'm behind the counter working, and look at this place. You don't feel like you're in Texas here. 'What about everyone with accents?'
"I look at them as tourists."

Those are the two things that motivate Gruber: To recreate New York, and to recreate the old world.

"I'll tell you something; I have one of the biggest compliments that has bestowed on me personally was a holocaust survivor who came in here, ate my stuffed cabbage and told me the last time he had a taste like that was his mother's stuffed cabbage," Gruber said. "I can't tell you that I didn't have a dry eye after that. I have never been bestowed such an honor. When people say stuff like that, that's what makes me happy."