How did the word "schmaltz" come to mean excessive sentimentality? It is the Yiddish word for chicken fat, which became important in cooking because Jewish dietary laws ban butter for frying.
In Gentile culture, sentimentality is always associated with sickly sweetness, but a visit to Federal Delicatessen impresses on you the centrality of schmaltz to the Jewish culinary repertoire. The latkes (fritters of grated potato, onion and dill) are fried in it; it lends body to the matzo balls in the chicken soup, whose broth gleams with droplets of it; and there must be plenty in that chopped liver. This is, in short, not a weight-watcher's dining destination.
Federal is Al Brown's third Auckland venture, after Depot and Best Ugly Bagels. In New Zealand, "delicatessen" was always a name applied to retail stores selling salami and smelly cheese, which have been largely superseded by gourmet grocery stores. What Brown's operating here is an absolutely classic New York Jewish deli and it's hard to overstate what a terrific job he's made of it.
The fitout has achieved authenticity yet quite avoided the try-hard excess that such ventures often fall victim to. There are slightly elevated booths down one side, and tables down the middle. Waitresses whose retro uniforms are almost as snappy as their impressively cheerful service work the room with such efficiency that there always seems to be one within reach. The room-length open kitchen is sectioned according to task: here a chef plates up thick slivers of salmon; there another watches over a rack of chickens on a vertical charcoal rotisserie; and at the end a third cuts big slabs of apple pie and cheesecake.
