life and style

Old delicatessens and new delis

Are you a fan of today's coffee house delis or do you prefer the old-fashioned variety, festooned with hams and heaped with tottering piles of cheeses? Where's your favourite?
An Italian delicatessen
An Italian delicatessen in Old Compton Street, London, in 1939. Photograph: Hulton Getty

Suddenly they're all over the place, and not just in London, either. Delis, that is. There's a smart new deli in Mayfair, the Mount Street Deli, opened by Caprice Holdings, that has been whipping up most of the headlines. But in Fairford, deep in the Gloucestershire hinterland, the successful restaurant, Allium, has opened Deli Allium. And there's the Kendrick Street Deli in my local town, Stroud. And, well, they're popping up like mushrooms, marking the ley lines of contemporary eateries. Tony Naylor logged an admirable list of pointers on how to recognise a good one, but it rather assumed that they have always been with us. Indeed, they have been, but not in the form that we're familiar with now, which has been heavily influenced by the US/New York model.

For a start, delis used to be delicatessens, derived from the German (who got it from the French, who go it from the Romans). That may sound rather aspirational and la-di-da. Far from it. There was a splendid delicatessen in Reading, which I used to visit decades ago, that specialised in particular in Polish goodies, serving the large Polish community that lived in the area at the time. Of course, it didn't call itself a deli. It was called the Continental Stores, although my family always referred to it as the delicatessen. At the time it was one of the few sources of otherwise unobtainable gourmet exotica that we now regard as staples, and I can still remember that exotic musk of garlic, pork, paprika and cheese.

There was another place I used to frequent, that would undoubtedly now be classed as a deli, Hargreaves of Clitheroe in Lancashire, which was one of the few places which matured their own cheeses – stiltons for Christmas were a particular favourite. However, instead of delicatessen, the legend 'Italian Warehousemen' was emblazoned on the end wall, although they stocked a great deal more than just pasta, olive oil and tins of spaghetti.

At that time, delis had distinct national roots. There were Italian delis, such as Valvona & Crolla in Edinburgh, and Lina Stores, Fratelli Camisa and Gazzano's in London. There were French specialists like Roche Brothers in Old Compton Street, and Polish delis in Manchester, Leeds and west London, and places like Wally's of Cardiff that stocked all manner of sausages and sauerkraut, cakes and pickled cucumbers from eastern Europe. In those dark, dismal, post-war years, shops like these kept not only the immigrant communities from which they sprang supplied with essential rations from home, but were treasure houses for wannabe E Davids or Edouard de Pomianes.

Although many of these splendid places survive and thrive, the modern deli has lost that national specificity. They have become food emporia, stocking foods from dozens of countries. They have a sense of style that the old delis never had, festooned as they were with sausages and hams like Christmas decorations, tottering ziggurats of boxes of biscuits, cheeses plonked higgledy-piggledy inside a primitive chill cabinet. Not for them the blond oak shelving, the gleaming stainless steel and glass display cabinets and the clever lighting highlighting the takeaway paninis, wraps, baguettes and interesting meals for one.

Above all, they weren't places in which you ate or sipped your latte or macchiato while chatting to friends or reading the newspaper. They were delicatessens, places of commerce, not delis, places for social networking. The new-fangled deli has a smooth, form-and-function gloss, I suppose, but they lack the romance and magic of the crammed, cramped, crepuscular old-fangled delicatessen. Perhaps that's why I tend to favour places like Lina Stores in London, Valvona & Crolla in Edinburgh (which manages to combine old-fashioned virtues with contemporary commercial acuity), Alka-polskie delikatesy in Acton, or, J&J Graham of Penrith. But everyone has their favourites; let's hear about yours.


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