NY Jewish Food (Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview and Russ & Daughters in NYC)

In my travels around the New York area, I ended up eating at two restaurants serving Jewish/Kosher style foods. One was Regal Kosher Deli on Long Island and the other was Russ & Daughters in Manhattan.

Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview, NY:

Regal Kosher Deli is located in Plainview, NY on Long Island. They are a kosher deli serving pretty standard jewish foods. I ended up eating here on two occasions.

Pickles are delivered to every table upon being seated. They serve half sour and full sour pickles. Being that the half sour pickles were devoured before I could take a picture, it's obvious what everyone's favorite type of pickle is.

Bowls of coleslaw were also served with the pickles.

I tried two different types of knish on my visits here. My first knish was a plain potato filled knish. This one was square with mashed potatoes filling the flaky crust. Pretty tasty.

The spinach knish was my favorite of the two. It was round (I'm assuming the different shapes are so they can tell different fillings apart easier?), filled with a potato/spinach mix. It had more going on in terms of flavor compared to the plain knish.

On one visit I tried a corned beef sandwich. This consisted of a whole lot of sliced meat between sliced rye bread. I have to admit that these jewish deli style sandwiches are a little boring for my liking. I know cheese can't be added because of the whole kosher thing, but they are too much of the same thing.

On another visit I tried what they called a stuffed sandwich. I ordered the Corned Beef, Tongue, and Hard Boiled Egg. When the sandwich was delivered, the waiter informed me that they were out of hard boiled egg. I'm also pretty sure the menu said there should have been coleslaw on here as well, but that was missing too. Without those components, this was basically a corned beef sandwich stacked on top of a tongue sandwich. I did enjoy the novelty of eating sliced tongue. That is not a cut of meat that I eat very often.

Regal Kosher Deli was enjoyable. They may have boring sandwiches, but that's expected in a jewish deli. That aside, I did like the rest of the dining experience in here...





Russ & Daughters in NYC:

I first heard about Russ & Daughters several years ago and they have been on my list of New York foods to try ever since. It took me several more visits to the city before I finally made it to Russ & Daughters. They've been around for 101 years, so the amount of time it took me to try the restaurant was probably nothing for them.

They specialize in smoked and cured fish. Their cases are filled with all sorts of lox, smoked salmon, mackerel, sable, and other seafoods. There's also a large selection of cream cheeses, bagels, desserts, and other jewish foods for sale. Russ & Daughters was a very busy place. I waited over a half hour to put in my order. People were buying quite a bit in here as well. Almost every order placed that I heard was at least $100. Russ & Daughters is a little gold mine...

I had an everything bagel with pastrami salmon with goat cream cheese. The salmon was thinly sliced with a peppery coating on the outside. The goat cream cheese was new to me. It still had the consistency of normal cream cheese, but with the distinctive earthy flavor that seems to be in all goat cheeses. The combination of it all was delicious...

I also tried a pickle. A customer in front of me was ordering gallons of these pickles, announcing that she takes the train from Vermont to replenish her pickles every time her supply gets low. With an endorsement like that, I decided I must try one. It was a very tasty pickle, although I don't know if I'd travel from out of state for a pickle. 

Flakowitz Bagel Inn in Boca Raton, FL

I had breakfast at a restaurant called Flakowitz Bagel Inn on my last visit to Boca Raton. This place has apparently been around for quite a long time and is very popular. It is a New York style bagel place with a really large dining area. Most of these type of places in Boca seem to be always filled with senior citizens, but this one was a bit different. Most of the people in here were young to middle aged, with most everyone in my hearing range having very obnoxious New Jersey accents.

 

A basket of bagels was delivered to the table with everyone's food. I had an everything bagel that was very good.

Beside the bagel, I ordered their Two Egg Breakfast. This came with scrambled eggs, homefries, and two slices of bacon. It was a very basic breakfast, but it did the job!

Ben's Kosher Deli in Boca Raton, FL

Sometime last year I ate dinner at Ben's Kosher Deli in Boca Raton. Something that I wrote about that visit to Ben's got quite a few people upset, based on the emails and comments that I received. Perhaps it was because of my initial description of the demographics of Ben's customers, or maybe it had something to do with my explanation of how I don't follow religious dietary restrictions. I suppose another possibility is that these are avid Ben's Deli fans that couldn't fathom that I wasn't too impressed with the food here. Whatever upset people so much, I really wasn't expecting the response I got, so I'm wondering if I'll offend anyone in this post.

On my first visit to Ben's, the line was out the door to get in. On my second and most recent visit, we were one of the few occupied tables in the large restaurant. Pickles and coleslaw came first. Half sour pickles are awesome!

Last time, I found Ben's sandwiches to be very dry and kind of flavorless. On this visit, I decided to get something totally different and ordered the potato pancake dinner. I was actually surprised when the plate came. The large plate was filled with three of the biggest latkes I've ever seen with a bowl of apple sauce on the side. Taste-wise, these were really good, but imagine eating a huge plate of really dense hash browns. There's only a certain amount of deep fried potato that I could take in one sitting. Really, just one of these potato pancakes would have been plenty for a meal!

Overall, I was pleased with these potato pancakes. It was more fried potato than I could possibly eat, but they were otherwise good. Much better than the sandwiches from Ben's Kosher Deli...

Weekend Trip: Greek Salad from Stop 20 Diner

I ate at Stop 20 Diner in Elmont, NY. I was with a very large group of people so that resulted in the service being a bit sub-par, but regardless, this eating experience was better than my last visit here.

The meal started out with a basket of really good challah and assorted crackers.

The plates of coleslaw and half sour pickles came out next.

For the main course, I ordered a Greek Salad. This was a good example of what I want in a Greek Salad, complete with stuffed grape leaves and anchovies. The only thing that was missing was kalamata olives. Besides from the olives, I had no complaints.

Stop 20 got it's name from the days when trolleys/streetcars ran along Hempstead Turnpike. The trains were eventually replaced by buses, but throughout the changes in transportation, stop 20 along these routes has been on the corner in front of the diner, hence the name...

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton, FL seems to be the restaurant of choice for the retirees living in Century Village to have breakfast. I've eaten here in the past when visiting a Century Village resident, so this particular visit was no different.

I ordered a sesame bagel with Nova cream cheese and homefries. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about food like the average senior citizen, but my homefries were served on the plate with someone's omelet. Their omelet was supposed to come with grits, and they weren't served at all until the waiter finally returned and was reminded. Once the homefries were transferred over to my plate, I found them to be really tasty. Moving on to the bagel, I asked for it to be toasted, and it was kind of burned around the edges. The Nova cream cheese seemed really stingy with the actual nova. There wasn't enough smoked salmon in there to justify the extra charge in my opinion. So in the end, I liked the homefries. Will I return? On the next visit to a Century Village resident, most definitely!

Ben's Deli in Boca Raton

I visited Ben's Deli in Boca Raton, FL and ate with all of the old Jewish retirees.

A bowl of pickles and coleslaw were automatically brought out as an appetizer. I normally prefer dill or garlic pickles, but those half sour pickles (light green) were really good. No complaints about the coleslaw either.

I ordered a turkey sandwich and a spinach knish. The knish was good, filled with spinach and potato in a thin flaky crust. It was nice and moist so it didn't need any mustard.

I didn't find the turkey sandwich very impressive. It was overpriced ($9) and came with nothing. It was just a whole lot of turkey between two slices of rye bread. The bread wasn't that great either. I ended up putting some mustard and some of the coleslaw on the sandwich to make it a bit less boring.

Overall, I wasn't too impressed with Ben's Deli. I could think of several other places that have better sandwiches for half the price. Perhaps Ben's justifies the high price by serving Kosher meat, but I don't follow any dietary restrictions based on what's written in an ancient text, so whether it's Kosher or not doesn't matter to me. The sandwich was pretty typical of what these New York Style Kosher Delis serve, so I guess I can't complain too much. Compared to other Kosher Delis though, I've been to much better.

Toojay's Greek Wrap

I had a Greek Wrap from Toojay's in Altamonte Springs, FL. The wrap consisted of turkey, ham, feta, lettuce, olives, peppercinis, and Italian dressing, all wrapped in a tortilla. Fruit salad was served on the side. I enjoyed it.

Also on this visit, someone that I was eating with ordered a potato knish. This reminded me of something that I've noticed in my previous visits to several Toojay's locations. If someone at the table orders a knish, it seems that about 90% of the time it will not be served and the waiter will have to be reminded about it after the rest of the food is delivered. It's very strange that over multiple visits to multiple Toojay's, they almost consistently forget to bring out a knish when everything else about the order was correct.

Chicken Pot Pie From Toojay's

I ate at the Toojay's in Altamonte Springs, FL. Whenever I eat at a Toojay's, it seems I normally get some sort of sandwich. I had a coupon during this particular visit for half off a dinner, so I passed on a sandwich or a wrap. I ordered the chicken pot pie. It came with a choice of a house salad or a soup, and I choose the salad.

The chicken pot pie followed. It wasn't an actual pie, and instead was a bowl with some pie crust on the bottom, pie filling poured over the crust, and then had a second piece of pie crust on top. The pie tasted good enough, although I would have liked more vegetables in the filling. There were some carrots and potatoes, but that was about it for the veggies.