“Deli Man”

The very short history of documentaries with “_____Man” as a title format has nearly inspired a fully-fledged subgenre of their own. Films like Grizzly Man, Winnebago Man, and Big River Man evoke certain expectations of humanist character studies and sympathetic portrayals of quirky obsessions and/or passions. Erik Anjou’s Deli Man in many ways is no different, focusing on David “Ziggy” Gruber, proprietor of the Houston-based Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen. But more broadly, it’s about “deli men” as a dwindling Jewish institution.

As a main character, Ziggy seems on the surface to be a perfect candidate on which to hang a documentary. A middle-aged, boisterous, classically-trained restaurateur who peppers his speech with old-world Yiddish colloquialisms (says one of his family members: “He was born an 80-year-old Jew!”), Ziggy is a third-generation delicatessen owner whose self-effacing commitment to continuing his family legacy is thoroughly likeable. But passion alone is not altogether interesting enough to sustain a 90-minute movie. Without a central goal or endeavor, the character-based elements of this doc unfortunately fall flat. A brief foray with the out-of-shape Ziggy to a gym training session is an especially inert attempt to project a narrative onto the deli man’s life.

The instances where Deli Man achieves something more artful are the day-to-day realties of running a restaurant. The opening sequence, with Ziggy on hand to take stock of a 5:00 AM delivery of supplies teases a more procedural, fly-on-the-wall look at deli operations. It’s something of a disappointment when this structure gives way to a more conventional, talking-head presentation. Anjou occasionally bites off more than he can chew, overstuffing his film with interviews with deli men (and women) from around the country, and celebrity cameos by Jewish personalities like Jerry Stiller, Fyvush Finkel, and Larry King (hilariously identified as a “deli maven” in the caption graphic). These interviews attempt to offer a comprehensive account of delicatessens in the United States (at one time numbering in the thousands in New York City alone; now down to only 150 in the nation), but the competing attention between this vital social history and Ziggy’s story leave the documentary feeling unfocused.

But Deli Man is not without its charm. When Ziggy wafts a plate of stuffed cutlets towards the camera, and claims “You can taste the diaspora!”, it bespeaks the awesome responsibility of propagating a cultural legacy. It’s in these fleeting moments that Deli Man reaches far beyond the flash of a feature-length Food Network special.