Katz’s Delicatessen

Katz’s Delicatessen is a historic Jewish-style delicatessen at 205 East Houston Street, at the corner of Ludlow Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The business traces its history to 1888, when Iceland Brothers opened a small delicatessen on Ludlow Street. Willy Katz joined the business in 1903, prompting the name to change to Iceland & Katz, and his cousin Benny Katz bought out the Iceland brothers in 1910, creating Katz’s Delicatessen. Harry Tarowsky joined the partnership in 1917. Construction connected with the New York City Subway later forced the deli to move across the street to its present site, while the familiar Houston Street frontage was added between 1946 and 1949. Katz’s became closely tied to the enormous Jewish immigrant community of the Lower East Side and was also frequented by performers from the Yiddish theatres that once flourished around Second Avenue. During the Second World War, the owners regularly sent food to their sons serving in the armed forces, inspiring the long-running slogan “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army”. The business remained with the Katz and Tarowsky families until 1988, when Martin Dell, his son Alan and son-in-law Fred Austin joined the ownership. Much of the deli’s character has changed remarkably little: customers still receive tickets when entering, meat is hand-cut at the long counter, salamis hang above the room and the walls are crowded with photographs accumulated over decades. Its pastrami sandwiches have made Katz’s a New York institution, while its distinctive interior has also turned it into one of the city’s most recognisable film locations.

Katz’s Delicatessen has appeared in Contract on Cherry Street (1977), Off Beat (1986), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Donnie Brasco (1997), Sidewalks of New York (2001), Across the Universe (2007), Enchanted (2007), We Own the Night (2007) and The Jim Gaffigan Show (2015–2016). The deli has been allowed to play itself in several of these productions, but filmmakers have also transformed it into fictional restaurants and even used its less familiar kitchen and refrigerated back rooms. Its most famous appearance is unquestionably When Harry Met Sally… (1989), whose lunch scene became so closely associated with Katz’s that the table used by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan is now marked inside the restaurant.

In Contract on Cherry Street (1977), Katz’s Delicatessen provides an appropriately hidden setting for the criminal conspiracy at the heart of the television film. Frank Sinatra plays New York police inspector Frank Hovannes, who begins pursuing organised crime outside normal police procedures after becoming frustrated by corruption and the limitations placed on his investigation. As Hovannes becomes an increasing threat, his enemies decide that he has to be eliminated. The contract to murder him is prepared inside one of the refrigerated meat rooms at Katz’s, far removed from the busy public dining room most customers would recognise. Hanging meat and the cramped industrial surroundings give the meeting a suitably clandestine atmosphere and make this one of the more unusual uses of the deli on screen.

In Off Beat (1986), Katz’s Delicatessen appears during a meal shared by New York police officers. The comedy follows Joe Gower, a library worker who reluctantly agrees to impersonate his police-officer friend at a charity dance rehearsal and becomes romantically involved with policewoman Rachel Wareham. What begins as a fairly harmless favour grows increasingly complicated as Joe becomes entangled in police life despite not actually being an officer. Katz’s fits naturally into that world as one of the genuine New York locations used throughout the film, with the officers gathering around the tables for food rather than the deli being disguised as an entirely different establishment.

In When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Katz’s Delicatessen is the setting for one of the best-known restaurant scenes in American film. Harry Burns confidently tells Sally Albright that a man can always tell when a woman is faking an orgasm. Sally disagrees and decides to demonstrate her point immediately, loudly acting out an increasingly convincing fake orgasm while sitting at their table in the crowded deli. Conversations around them stop and other customers turn to watch as Harry becomes progressively more uncomfortable. Sally then calmly returns to her food as though nothing unusual has happened. The scene ends when an older woman at a nearby table, played by director Rob Reiner’s mother Estelle Reiner, tells the waiter that she wants whatever Sally is having. The sequence became inseparable from Katz’s itself, and the table used by Harry and Sally is now marked with a sign identifying its connection to the film. What was simply another real New York restaurant when the scene was filmed has consequently become a destination closely associated with the movie more than three decades later.

In Donnie Brasco (1997), Katz’s Delicatessen becomes one of the places where undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone can briefly step away from his identity as jewel thief Donnie Brasco. Pistone meets FBI supervisor Dean Blandford inside the deli as pressure increases around his infiltration of the Bonanno crime family. Blandford wants the Mafia operation pushed towards Florida, partly because another undercover agent working there is in danger of being exposed, and instructs Pistone to encourage the mobsters around him to expand their activities south. The meeting illustrates the increasingly difficult position Pistone occupies: while sitting in an ordinary New York deli discussing FBI strategy, he is already deeply embedded in the criminal world of Lefty Ruggiero and Sonny Black and must return to them immediately afterwards as Donnie. Katz’s is therefore used as neutral territory between the two identities he is struggling to keep separate.

In Sidewalks of New York (2001), Katz’s Delicatessen appears during one of the many conversational episodes that make up Edward Burns’s interconnected portrait of relationships in Manhattan. Benjamin, played by David Krumholtz, sits inside Katz’s with a friend while the two work their way through classic deli food, including a pastrami sandwich and a hot dog. The scene fits the film’s deliberately informal approach, in which conversations in apartments, cafés, streets and neighbourhood restaurants gradually connect the romantic lives of six New Yorkers. Rather than disguising Katz’s, the production uses the real deli as part of the recognisable city surrounding the characters, with its crowded tables and unmistakable interior contributing to the film’s sense of everyday Manhattan life.

In Across the Universe (2007), Katz’s Delicatessen is used during the period when Max Carrigan discovers that dropping out of college has made him eligible for the military draft. With the Vietnam War hanging over him, Max sits with Jude, JoJo and the rest of their friends as they discuss increasingly desperate ways in which he might fail his military physical. Suggestions include swallowing cotton to create a suspicious shadow on an X-ray and eating large quantities of beetroot so that his urine appears to contain blood. JoJo, who has already served in the military, brings the conversation back to reality by warning Max that simply destroying his draft papers will not make the obligation disappear. The scene initially plays much of the situation for humour, but Max’s draft soon becomes one of the film’s most serious storylines when he is inducted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. Katz’s works particularly well for the sequence because almost nothing is needed to make the restaurant feel like late-1960s New York; much of its interior already looked much the same during the period in which the film is set.

In Enchanted (2007), Katz’s Delicatessen is used in a way that looks very different from its appearance in most films, with the action taking place primarily in the kitchen rather than the public dining room. Nathaniel, Queen Narissa’s bumbling servant, has followed Prince Edward from the animated kingdom of Andalasia into modern New York while secretly trying to prevent him from finding Giselle. In the Katz’s kitchen, Narissa magically appears to Nathaniel in a vat of soup and reminds him that Giselle must be killed before she can threaten Narissa’s position. Poisoned apples are prepared as part of the plan, directly echoing Snow White. Pip the chipmunk overhears the conversation and later tries to warn Edward of Nathaniel’s betrayal while the prince is eating inside the deli. Unable to speak normally in the real world, Pip desperately acts out what he has witnessed while Nathaniel tries to convince Edward that the animal has simply gone mad. The sequence makes unusually extensive use of Katz’s behind-the-scenes working areas as well as its dining space.

In We Own the Night (2007), Katz’s Delicatessen is disguised as the fictional Belmont Diner in Queens during a crucial stage in Bobby Green’s gradual movement towards his police family. Bobby’s brother Joseph has recently been shot after police target the Russian drug organisation connected to Bobby’s nightclub. Still shaken by seeing his badly wounded brother in hospital, Bobby sits in the diner with his girlfriend Amada and his friend Jumbo. Vadim Nezhinski and members of his organisation arrive, and what initially seems like an ordinary late-night encounter quickly becomes much more serious. Vadim tells Bobby that the organisation has the names of police officers who are being targeted and makes it clear that they are prepared to retaliate violently against the investigation. Bobby hides his alarm until Vadim leaves, then goes directly to the police with what he has learned. The conversation at Katz’s therefore marks an important step in Bobby’s transformation from someone determined to remain outside his family’s police world into the person who eventually helps them bring down the organisation.

In The Jim Gaffigan Show (2015–2016), Katz’s Delicatessen becomes one of Jim Gaffigan’s regular escapes from his crowded home life. Playing a fictionalised version of himself, Gaffigan repeatedly meets his comedian friend Dave Marks at the deli, usually with food occupying as much of Jim’s attention as whatever conversation they are supposed to be having. The choice was closely connected to Gaffigan’s real life: he genuinely frequented Katz’s and wanted the series to use old New York businesses that belonged naturally to the neighbourhood rather than generic restaurant sets. Katz’s consequently appears several times as itself, with scenes filmed early in the morning before normal business made shooting impractical. One storyline even uses a visit to Katz’s to set up Dave’s interest in Jeannie’s sister Maria; when they later meet properly at the Gaffigan apartment, Maria recognises Dave from having seen him with Jim at the deli. More broadly, Katz’s functions throughout the series as the place where Jim can briefly retreat with a pastrami sandwich before returning to the chaos of raising five children in a small Manhattan apartment.

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

The Jim Gaffigan Show (2015–2016)

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