Let's be super clear; the internet has no use for another food blog.  There is no niche of cooking that has gone under-represented, there are no revolutionary recipes that have gone unpublished, no one is clambering for another thousand-word think piece on the state of Thai cooking in New York.

And yet here we are: I cannot help but to write about food, life, restaurants, and recipes. I hope you take half as much joy in reading what comes of this as I do thinking about and writing it.

Wait, there are three different blogs?

Call it food blog A.D.D. - there are too many different things I want to write about.  

Teach Me How To Deli is a diary I’m keeping as I try to learn everything there is to know about Jewish food. Recipes, Experiences, Interviews - whatever gets me closer to mastery of Jewish cooking, it goes here.

Recipes are (wait for it) recipes that I'm futzing with in the kitchen and want to share.  I rarely make the same dish twice, and so I cant promise that the dishes posted here have been tested for optimal awesomeness, but I can promise that I won't post a recipe that I thought tasted bad.  If you make a recipe from the blog and it tastes bad, you probably did it wrong.  Or, you know, I got lucky. 

The Schmaltz is for everything else - stories about my work in the restaurant world, life musings, whatever else I feel like.  Much like actual schmaltz, it's not for everyone.

The Writer, Cook, and Occasional Dishwasher

I've loved food since the first time I tasted a Buffalo wing.  A few years ago I had a quarter life crisis and got a job slinging hot dogs and burgers at a cart in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Since then I've worked basically every restaurant position imaginable - from line cook to delivery boy, cashier to general manager, dishwasher to chef de cuisine.  I helped open a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan and one in Dallas. I had a sandwich I created listed as one of the top 15 of the year by New York Mag, which remains a crowning achievement in my life. The Dallas Observer called a dish of mine “a spiritual moment,” and D Magazine named me a Hero of Dallas. And now I get to cook at Greene Family Camp, a Jewish summer camp Just outside of Waco! Food has been very good to me.

Mrs. Belly

Leslie (AKA Mrs. Belly) is a sweet girl from Austin, Texas who somehow got tangled up with a Yankee idiot. She is an essential part of the blogging process, as the majority-part dishwasher and general tidy-er, cheering section, restaurant second-opinion-giver and sometimes editor of grammar and spelling. She likes sushi, Texas barbecue, cauliflower, queso, tasting menus, sweet white wines, oaky red wines, and really just wines in general.

Where do these gorgeous pictures all over your website come from?

The insanely talented Graham Burns, who photographed the pop-up restaurant I threw for my 30th Birthday party. 

Since you're still reading this, here's an upsetting video of me making and consuming a 70,000 calorie Choco-Taco.