HOUSTON – In his short life, this owner and chef of Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant has run three very successful delis. He’s in the third generation in his family to own a deli. And Texas is the third U.S. coast where he’s educated the populace on how life without a great deli is really no life at all.
Part New Yorker (he was born and grew up there), part entertainer (he’s now one of the stars in a nationally-distributed documentary film, Deli Man) and 100% chef (graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in London and training in a three-Michelin star London restaurant), Gruber is larger than life. His menu and drive to make customers happy are even larger than that. Actually, when he’s not in the restaurant making people laugh, the things he’s put on the walls almost always do, and if there’s ever been a time he didn’t make them happy, it’s pretty certain they still left full.
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The first Gruber deli man, Ziggy’s grandfather Max, ventured into New York some time in the early 1900s from Budapest. Beginning when he was 16, Max worked in several delis around the city until the time came to start his own. 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. It was two years before the Great Depression hit, but people have got to eat, and for the next 25 years eat they did. A lot.
Through those famed doors came Walter Winchel, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, the Marx brothers (all of them!) and just about every other famous name that graced a stage – many before they were famous. Meanwhile Max and his brothers-in-law became deli rock stars in their own right, opening some of New York’s most famous delis such as Berger’s on 47th, Wally’s Downtown and The Griddle on 16th.
At age 12, Ziggy’s 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.
By the time the third generation was in place, the deli bug was biting earlier. Where grandfather Max started at 16 and father Eugene at 12, Ziggy 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. It was his grandfather, then in his 70s, who decided it was time for Ziggy to learn all the trade secrets, and that he did. His cousin Norman, also a deli owner, taught him about catering and marketing, which came to Ziggy naturally.
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With some of the best teachers to be had on learning the family business, Ziggy’s thirst still wasn’t satisfied. Following the passing of his grandfather and with his family’s support, he enrolled at the Cordon Bleu in London and for the next two years, learned the trade from some of Europe’s best chefs. He graduated at the top of his 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, he did get to cook for the Queen of England.
When he returned to the United States, his uncle decided it was time Ziggy and his dad run the Spring Valley business and retired. There, Ziggy stayed until the early 1990s when he set out on his own in California – where else do budding stars go? – and opened Ziggy G’s on Sunset Boulevard. Again a Gruber deli found success. Besides the food, which everyone said was outstanding, it was just as well known for serving stars like Johnny Depp, Warren Beatty, Leonardo De Caprio and Dennis Hopper.
Following a dispute with his landlord, Ziggy left LA to return to New York to do consulting work with his 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. Lenny had a dream, an odd dream, but a dream nonetheless: to bring true New York deli food to Houston, as in Texas. Ziggy said yes, and the Lone Star got bigger and brighter.
Kenny & Ziggy’s opened in 1999. It was just before computers were supposed to collapse and the world pitched into millennium madness. Fortunately, the end of the world didn’t happen, and people still have to eat, and diners have made Kenny & Ziggy’s the most popular delis and one of the most popular restaurants in the city.
Gruber opened a second Kenny & Ziggy’s location in 2016 in the West University/Greenway Plaza area of Houston to bring more pastrami and potato latkes to his dedicated deli diners.
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 goes 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, Ziggy is center stage at Kenny & Ziggy’s, a place the film’s producer calls “arguably the finest delicatessen restaurant in the U.S.”
But don’t expect stardom to change things at home. Almost every day, seven days and
nights a week, Ziggy Gruber is in place, in the deli and making people smile (either from his jokes, his food or both).
He wears his crowns well.
Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant has two locations, at 2327 Post Oak Boulevard in the heart of the Galleria area and business district and at 5172 Buffalo Speedway in the Plaza in the Park Shopping Center at Buffalo Speedway and Westpark. The restaurants are open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday; 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday; and 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday. For more information visit www.kennyandziggys.com.
Click here to see a recipe for Kenny & Ziggy's chicken pot pie.