Texas Jewish Deli alert -- Bware the goyish sandwiches, even if they taste OK

So, on a mission of vital importance to the Jewish people, here I am blogging from a South Texas hotel room. I had a nice day driving my poseur SUV across the range, observing what pastrami and corned beef look like while they're still alive. But when I returned to San Antone, I was mighty hungry, and lots of interesting Barbecue joints and Tex-Mex places flashed by on the 410 Loop, and I couldn't figure out which exit I was supposed to use to get to these places. This is the curse of the Frontage Road, the evil gift of Texan highway engineers to frustrated motorists and suburban sprawl.

Finally, in desparation, I just slid off the freeway, and rode down a frontage road. What did I see but an establishment called "Jason's Deli," which, as I found out when I entered the place, is a chain that is metastisizing across the southwest, the south, and the Great Plains. Well, I was hungry, and, with some trepidation, despite the appetizing smells emanating from kitchen I ordered a Reuben.

Soon enough , the Reuben arrived, and what can I say? It was goyish. Not bad, but goyish.

Oy! all you frumsters, Orthodox or Conservative, will say. What do you expect, a Reuben is, by it's nature, treif. It's corned beef sauerkarut, russian dressing and Swiss Cheese on Rye. Milk and meat. Treif! Treif! Treif! Of course it's treif. I can see them telling me, you should have looked up the web site for Congreation Rodefei Shalom, which has information about the local Va'ad, or

DELIcious Foods
7460 Callaghan Rd. #300
San Antonio, Texas 78229
Phone: (210) 366-1844

Or at the very least, just go into any H.E.B store, there's plenty of stuff with hekhshers, even local Tex-Mex cuisine stuff. Yes, I can hear it now. Why, CA, you nudnik, do you order a treif menu item and then complain about it being "goyish?"

Well I say you're all wrong. Just as I, CA, am an apikorus, not a goy, there are dishes that are treif, but not goyish, and the Reuben in one of them. I'm sure Lenny Bruce did a skit about this....Reuben Sandwiches are Jewish, Tuna Salad sandwiches (even ones with a hekhsher) are goyish...

What made Jason's Reuben goyish? The corned beef wasn't bad, and they did pile it high in true New York Style. No, the problem was that they didn't grill the damned thing. A true Reuben has to be grilled on a scuzzy-looking griddle using too much stale oil, and lots of black stuff from the griddle have to be incorporated onto the outer surface of the grilled bread. Also, the cheese needs to actually melt onto the meat, thus ensuring that the halachic prohibition against cooking meat and mik is truly violated. Also, to my taste, the ratio of sauerkraut to beef and cheese should be rather low.

Jason's chefs violated all thse rules. The sandwich was assembled and apparently just run under a toaster. In fact, the lower slice of bread was totally soggy and worthless as a sandwich wrapper, and I was forced to eat it with a fork. Of course, the cheese wasn't really melted, and, most definitely, the whole assembly was entiurely too hygienic to rate as an authentic deli Reuben. The whole point of a Reuben is to get a years worth of saturated fats into your body in one sitting, and thus keep your cardiologist employed. Alas, Jason just didn't quite do this.

But it was filling, and thus allowed me to skip dinner and pocket part of my meal allowance from the expense account.

In doing so, I made another astounding discovery about Texas..

More to come...