L.A. Reinvents the Deli : New York’s Carnegie marches into town in what is becoming a big parade

“I’m running out of product,” said manager Steve Romick, standing at the door looking miserable as he turned people away. “We’re going to have to close early.”

Thus ended the first night of the first day of the most hyped deli in history. They were low on food, low on drinks, low on energy.

Nobody had quite expected it to be like that. When the management opened the doors at 7 a.m. there were people waiting; at 7 p.m. there were still people waiting. By that time 2,000 people had walked through the door and the management had stopped counting heads.

“I’ve opened a lot of restaurants,” designer Pat Kuleto had said at the gala star-studded official opening a week earlier (the restaurant remained closed to the public), “but I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s the Batman of Delis.”

The analogy is apt; the Carnegie opened as if it were a movie, not a restaurant. The opening party had lights, carpets, columnists (Army Archerd was there from Variety, officially “chatting” with the incoming celebrities--of which there were dozens). The pre-opening hoopla was even more intense: Two years before the actual opening the columns were filled with items about the coming of New York’s most famous deli to Beverly Hills.

It’s no more than you’d expect when Hollywood’s richest man decides that deli is his dish. And deli is definitely Marvin Davis’ dish: he had a standing order at Century City’s Stage Deli for half a pound of Nova Scotia salmon, 6 bagels, a pint of cream cheese and 4 bags of potato chips to be delivered to his office every morning at 7 a.m. The order was canceled the day that the Carnegie opened, for Davis had only been making do. His real love was New York’s Carnegie, where he was known to spend a thousand dollars at one crack. Davis finally got tired of schlepping deli from New York and decided it was time for the deli to come to him. He struck a deal with the Carnegie, insisting that all he wanted was the best deli in the West. What he ended up with, however, was something more.

“It’s like a new breed of restaurant,” said Kuleto, “an upscale deli.” The hiring of Kuleto is a case in point: he is one of the world’s most famous restaurant designers. He’s done dozens of restaurants (including Postrio and Fog City Diner in San Francisco), and is now designing restaurants in Paris, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. But here he is designing a deli.

Delis, by their very nature, don’t get designed. Delis are the people’s restaurant, an all-American invention where the portions are big, the prices are fair and nobody cares what you’re wearing. The late Leo Steiner, the man who made New York’s Carnegie famous, thought that the deli had become the quintessential American restaurant. “It’s not ethnic anymore,” he said, “who doesn’t know chopped liver?”

Delis are supposed to be loud. Delis are supposed to be grubby. Delis are supposed to have stand-up comics sitting at a table in the corner and stand-up comics standing by your table, bringing you food and making your life miserable. Delis are supposed to leave you staggeringly full. But Delis are not supposed to have designers.

Take New York’s Carnegie. It is an unpretty places where you sit jowl to elbow with a neighboring stranger and wait for your plate to come and improve the view. Katz’s on the Lower East Side has all the charm of an Army commissary, where you come in, take a ticket and listen to rude countermen bark if they don’t think you’re ordering with sufficient speed. Even their slogan--”Send a salami to your boy in the Army” is military. While West Coast delis may have softer edges, even at their spiffiest they have all the charm of oversized coffee shops.

But the Beverly Hills Carnegie is different. “This,” said Kuleto, “is supposed to be reminiscent of what all delis should have been.” So Kuleto created a fantasy. He pointed around the front room, with its hanging Deco lights and wooden booths. “Imagine that this front room was the original deli that was built in the ‘20s.”

It’s easier to imagine that this was a set for a movie about a deli built in the ‘20s by somebody who had never been outside the State of California. “The second room was built after Prohibition in the ‘40s.” This room, you understand, is the one with the bar. The bar? “And the last room was added later because the deli was so popular.” Here you’ll find cozy padded booths, which is enough to make any Deli maven immediately suspicious. Delis aren’t supposed to be comfortable. “The idea,” Kuleto concluded, “was to make the place feel real.”

As real as anything in Hollywood. This, after all, is a deli where the comics sit not at the tables but on the board of directors. George Burns is chairman of the board. Milton Berle, who admits that he is “not a big deli man,” owns a piece of the action (2%).

And where but Hollywood would you find a deli with a bar? A deli with valets waiting to whisk your car away? A deli whose rent is a reported $27,000 a month? A deli with waiters who look like they are trying out for parts as Rob Lowe’s understudy? A deli that proudly offers pastrami on white with lettuce, tomato and mayo? A deli that lets you--God forbid--make your own egg creams at the table? And what’s that on the table--Dijon mustard? Leo Steiner would not have approved. There is much here, however, that Steiner would be proud of. The size of the portions, for example. It was Steiner who said, “We got so much here in this country. Why should we give a person a little bit of food? Are we a starving Third World nation?”

Rest in peace, Leo. Each sandwich at the new Carnegie is a minor mountain and a monument to excess. The pastrami comes from New York (most of it from the Carnegie itself, with back up from Brooklyn Provisions). The cheesecake comes from the Carnegie (although not, regretably, the Ruglach cheesecake variation). The novi (deli parlance for smoked Nova Scotia salmon) and the sable are smooth and soft; the cole slaw is wonderful.

And why not, with Bobbie Trager in charge? Trager, who had been general manager of New York’s Carnegie for seven years, grew up in delis. His grandfather owned New York’s legendary Murray’s Sturgeon Shop. He’s come to California (“there are more New Yorkers here than in New York anyway”) to manage the new Carnegie, and he probably knows as much about what a deli should be as anybody around.

Trager defends the pastrami on white. “I called it the Mia Farrow because I remembered that’s what she used to order when she came in. What can I say?” What Trager can say-- is that he finds some other California tastes very strange. “People here are very health conscious. I’ve never sold so many egg whites; Matzo brei with egg white really blew me away. And I hope there are enough turkeys in America for us to cook. This is different.”

This deli may be different--but it is only the beginning. Malibu is about to have a new deli of its own. Like the Beverly Hills Carnegie, it is the brainchild of a rich man, Paul Zimmerman, who “just wanted to have good deli food in my own neighborhood.” What’s on the menu? According to the press release, the Malibu Deli in the Cross Creek Center will feature, in addition to your usual pastrami and egg creams, “a California-style gourmet deli menu.” This will include “a large array of salads and light dishes recommended by the Heart Association and Pritikin Longevity Center.” A deli for dieters? Only in L.A.

But wait, there’s more to come. Next March Citrus’ Michel Richard, Bruce Marder of West Beach Cafe, DC 3 and Rebecca’s and investor Marvin Zeidler will open yet another deli--one that promises to redefine L.A. deli for all time. It will be a vast architect-designed space (larger than the Carnegie), where they will cure their own corned beef, smoke their own pastrami, pickle their own vegetables. They plan to bake their own bread--in a wood burning oven, no less--and have chickens and turkeys turning on a rosticceria. And that’s not all.

There will be a soda fountain and a wine store. There will be outdoor seating. The bar will serve cappuccino and croissants in the morning, beer and sausages at lunch, hard stuff in the evening. The kitchen will be open, the cases filled with salads. And wait until you taste the cheesecake.

But there is even more on the local deli horizon. When the Eureka Brewery opens at the end of the year it will have a restaurant designed by Barbara Lazaroff. And what will it be serving? International deli food by Wolfgang Puck (who is already making his own salami in anticipation).

The deli may have been born in New York, but right now it’s being bred in Los Angeles. It may never be the same. This American institution is replacing the cafe, for Los Angeles is reinventing the deli and claiming it as its own.

The Carnegie Deli, 300 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills. (213) 276-DELI. Open daily. Hours at the moment are 7 a.m.-8 p.m. No alcohol (liquor license is pending). Valet parking in the evening. All major credit cards accepted.