Today we’d like to introduce you to Ziggy Gruber.
Hi Ziggy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant opened in 1999, a lot of people weren’t thinking so much about Houston getting its first authentic New York-style deli but whether it would last. It wasn’t worry about how it would be accepted. See, the 1999 opening came just months before computers were supposed to collapse and the world be pitched into millennium madness. Fortunately, the arrival of the year 2000 came and went without the end of the world. And Kenny & Ziggy’s? Well it came and stayed, and stayed and stayed.
In fact, in its 26 years in business, the famed deli which has been on national TV multiple times, been the centerpiece of an internationally distributed documentary about American Jewish delis, founded a movement called National Deli Month and been repeatedly named one of the country’s best Jewish delis.
In my short life as owner and chef of what is now Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant and Bakery I’ve been privileged to run three very successful delis. I’m the third generation in my family to own a deli. And Texas is the third U.S. coast where I took the challenge to educate the populace on how life without a great deli is really no life at all.
My path to Houston went from New York to London to Los Angeles and then back to New York. I had just returned to New York in 1998 to do consulting work with my cousin when a good friend, Freddy Klein, former owner of Carnegie Deli and a restaurant broker, introduced me to Lenny Friedman from the Bronx, and his son Kenny. Lenny had a dream, an odd dream, but a dream nonetheless, to bring true New York deli food to Houston, as in Houston, Texas. I said yes, and a year later, the Lone Star got bigger and brighter.
Kenny & Ziggy’s opened on Post Oak Blvd. in Houston just down the street from The Galleria shopping mecca. It started off a pretty big hit, but in just a short time, became a really big hit and never looked back. Even during the depths of COVID when the deli was closed for inside dining, a video during one Jewish holiday showed more than 100 cars snaking around the parking lot waiting to pick up orders at the curb.
A second Houston chapter started in February 2022, when I learned a new owner of the center it was located in had plans to demolish the building and replace it with a large high rise. Fortunately, at the same time, a former Luby’s Cafeteria location just up the street became available. It was serendipity at its finest. The space was totally renovated following my dream deli designs, a full-service cocktail bar was added as were a soda fountain, a larger private room and two patios, all total doubling the seating capacity of the original deli.
In just two weeks (after months of construction), the old deli closed, was schlepped up the street in its entirety, and the new one opened in grand style. To no one’s surprise, even with it now having seating for more the 300 people, it still has periodic lines of fans waiting for a table to clear.
From a key spot on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” to recognition as one of the country’s most authentic, remaining Jewish-American delis is David Sax’s book “Save the Deli,” the country has taken notice. And in 2015, this child of the Great White Way went Hollywood. Deli Man is a film documentary looking at the men behind the food behind the tradition of delicatessens in Jewish culture. While it includes delis from all regions of the country, I was so honored to be center stage at Kenny & Ziggy’s, a place the film’s producer calls “arguably the finest delicatessen restaurant in the U.S.”
Every August, the deli participates in National Deli Month, a nationwide, annual event I started ten years ago this year to bring more attention to traditional Jewish delis across the country. Dozens of delis in cities all over America participate by offering specials on traditional deli dishes and raising money for local charities. The last two years even had a deli in Canada join us.
But don’t expect all this stardom to change things at home. I’m not demanding special colors of M&Ms in my dressing room. Still, almost every day, seven days and nights a week, I’m on the deli floor hoping to make people smile (either from my jokes, my food or both). And 26 years is just the beginning.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One thing that has never existed on this earth is a smooth road for an authentic Jewish deli. When first arriving in Houston in 1999 where no such place existed on the same scale, just finding and training people for the very intricate skills required for true deli food was a major challenge. Curing meats, slicing pastrami and paper-thin salmon, preparing the perfect matzo ball, making Eastern European foods to please the most particular Jewish mother, speaking deli to native Texans – now those were challenges. Road construction in the most heavily trafficked area of Houston, Texas, and the volatile roller coaster ride of food prices and shortages to maintain a menu with well over 150 different items have all be major challenges and obstacles which Kenny & Ziggy’s has met and survived. One of the biggest challenges was COVID when restaurants shut down and could only partially reopen months later. At one point, the deli began full curbside delivery with masked service people delivering packages of phone orders to waiting cars. At several points during this period, more than 100 cars snaked through the parking lot and during Jewish high holidays, the number of cars reached three times that amount.
Finally, moving is never fun, but moving a restaurant is what nightmares are made of. When Kenny & Ziggy’s moved locations just a few blocks away following months and months of construction and renovation on a new and larger space, the challenge was to minimize how long the deli would be closed. With every staff person, friends and anyone else who wanted to participate, I closed the original location and in just under two weeks, opened the new place for full service (doubling the number of available seats).
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Early in 2015, a documentary film called Deli Man opened nationwide, looking at the men behind the food behind the tradition of delicatessens in Jewish culture. Front and center in the film is Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant and Bakery in Houston. I’m the third generation in my family to own a deli. The first Gruber deli man was my grandfather Max, who fled persecution in Budapest – on a bicycle – in the early 1900s and made his way to New York. In 1927 he joined with brothers-in-law Morris and Izzy Rappaport to open The Rialto Deli, which had the additional claim of being the first deli to open its doors on Broadway. Walter Winchel, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman and the Marx brothers were all said to be regulars there.
At age 12, my father Eugene entered the business apprenticing with Max. When he felt he was finally ready and with help from his brother, Seymour, Eugene opened Genard’s on Madison Avenue. The second generation of Gruber deli-men took the stage, and Genard’s became a quick success and remained so for three decades. Where grandfather Max started at 16 and father Eugene at 12, I stepped behind the counter at age eight. By this time, the family had moved to Spring Valley, New York, where Seymour and Eugene owned a deli named Cresthill Kosher Deli.
Following the death of my grandfather and with my family’s support, I left the deli business and enrolled at the Cordon Bleu in London. I graduated at the top of my class, and then spent the next two years working in London’s only three-star Michelin restaurants, Le Gavroche and The Water Side Inn. While it wasn’t quite the Marx brothers, I did get to cook for the Queen of England. The deli business called me back, however, and I returned to run my father’s deli. In the early 1990s, I moved to California and opened Ziggy G’s on Sunset Boulevard, serving stars like Johnny Depp, Warren Beatty, Leonardo De Caprio and Dennis Hopper.
After some problems with the landlord, I left LA to return to New York to do consulting work with my cousin. But then a good friend Freddy Klein, former owner of Carnegie Deli and a restaurant broker, introduced Ziggy to Lenny Friedman from the Bronx, and his son Kenny, both then living in Houston, Texas. Lenny had a dream to bring true New York deli food to Houston. We struck a deal and Kenny & Ziggy’s opened in 2000. Kenny later opted out of the business, leaving me the owner and chief deli man.
In 2022, after learning the center in which the deli was located was slated to be razed and redeveloped, I moved a few blocks up the street to 1743 Post Oak. The move allowed me to nearly double the size of the restaurant, as well as add a full cocktail bar, soda fountain, two patios and an enlarged private event room.
When first asked to come to Texas where I’d never been, my first question was, “Is there a Jewish community in Houston?” Of course, I not only found out there was quite a vibrant one, I quickly became a vibrant part of it. Over the years, I have worked helping raise funds for various organizations like the Jewish Community Center, various area synagogues and Hillel, the international Jewish campus organization. After Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017 damaging or destroying so many homes of Jewish families, I opened during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays for the first time in the 17-year history of the restaurant. In doing that, I also donated a portion of all sales to the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.
On a national level (my work with Hillel has been in both Texas and Louisiana), I took the message of the ‘Deli Man’ movie and in 2016 founded National Deli Month, recruiting Jewish delis across the country (and now Canada!) to participate and bring attention to the diminishing number of remaining delis. Each August since, each deli creates a special menu from which a portion of sales goes to a local charity. I’ve raised dollars for the Holocaust Museum Houston.
Throughout the year, I do enjoy offering to help in various causes, sometimes tied to unexpected tragedies and sometimes tied to festivals, celebrations or singular crusades.
Besides Deli Man, Kenny & Ziggy’s has been featured in televisions’ “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” as well as David Sax’s book “Save the Deli,” about the most authentic, remaining Jewish-American delis the country.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
The world runs on love. That sounds hokey, but believing that is the best advice anyone can get. Few people have even an inkling of an idea how much work, stress and time go into running an authentic Jewish deli. It’s one of the reasons the number of such delis have declined so much. It certainly isn’t because people don’t love to eat the food. To run such a place, the owners have to be in love with what they are doing.
Besides the food and the culture, of course, deli people are probably best known for sharp tongues, snappy comebacks and no patience. Can’t say that’s not true to a point but in all my years of being in the business, I’ve never found a more dedicated, loving and giving community of people than deli owners. That’s the love it takes to be successful
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kennyandziggys.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kennyandziggys
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/kennyandziggys
Image Credits
1 photo by Debora Smail All others by Paula Murphy
