Historical November–December 2023 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The St. Louis area is undergoing a bagel renaissance. Almost overnight, there are more spots selling water bagels, boiled before baking.
In spring, a new deli opened as well that tries to capture, with food and atmosphere, the delis that are seldom around anymore in most cities. Deli Divine is located at 5501 Delmar at Belt.
It is in the old Regional Hospital building. Situated on the Delmar Divide, it tries to bring together the north and south areas adjacent to Delmar. Build a Bear founder Maxine Clark bought the building.
She is using it to house nonprofit service organizations and some affordable housing. And a deli.
A Jewish style deli.
It was once said that if you had 100 Jews in a room, you’d have 99 political parties. So it is with Jewish cooking. Saying that, I can say my own prejudices. I’m from Detroit which had numerous delis and bagel places in the 1950s and where a number moved to the suburbs , particularly after the 1967 riot.
I also ate in delis in New York and Chicago. New York had larger, perhaps chewier bagels.
They all had the cholesterol based Jewish diets schmaltz, fatty tasty corned beef and pastrami, salty lox, smoked fish—whitefish and chubs, The new Deli Divine has a wide array of the products I grew up with.
I sampled a bagel with lox and a shmer.
To my way of thinking, there was too little each but given the price of lox that’s understandable. What was disappointing was the pastrami.
It was dry and lacked flavor. Why?
It was wafer thin and lacked fat.
The flavor is in the fat. Pastrami isn’t a health food.
The matzo ball soup was good, reminiscent of my aunt’s.
I did not sample my mother’s whitefish, chubs, or herring. That’s for another trip.
There were samples of honey cake at the counter, well flavored and good texture.
There is a marketplace where one can get bagels to go, cheeses and the best looking bottles of kosher dills. Plus a barrel to pick out a single succulent dill.
The atmosphere? It’s like the delis I remember. People shouting, greeting, as it had been at Hy Horensteins in my hometown.
I would vouchsafe to say that Deli Divine is bringing back people who had not been there on Delmar for decades. That can only help our East Loop. Around noon there was a queue. People kept coming. More development on Delmar up to Union is planned.
There will still be a divide but a little less discernible perhaps.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November–December 2023.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2023_11.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
