On Deli Pickles: My “Madeleine”
Tucked away in a shopping center in the quaint suburbs of New York, Rye Ridge Deli is known for their traditional sandwiches, perfectly cooked omelets, and freshly baked desserts. Regulars swear by delicacies like Sally’s Special – ham, turkey, tongue and Swiss on Rye with Russian dressing – and The Harry and Gail – Smoked salmon, lettuce, tomato, bacon on whole wheat or rye bread. But for me and my two brothers, the real magic of Rye Ridge Deli has always arrived before the menus even hit the table — our deli highlight is the cold, metal bowl of pickles allotted to every table like a pre-dinner bread basket.
At the deli, pickles are a ritual. As kids, we’d watch the server come towards us with the silver bowl, the sour smell of the pickles mixing with the smell of pastrami and french fry grease that escaped out of the kitchen, oddly but comfortingly located right next to our signature booth. Our grimy hands reached towards the briny dills before they were even placed down on the table.
As we frequented the restaurant more and more throughout our childhood and into our adulthood, the staff of the deli has, more or less, stayed the same. When us kids sit in our classic corner booth, its leather bench fraying and peeling, two servings of the pickles are now placed in front of us, the staff well aware of our decade-long obsession. I opt for the more olive-toned pickles – they’re more sour – but my brothers remain loyal to the forest green half-sours.
When we return to the deli, wrists deep in a bowl of misshapen, bumpy cylinders, time flashes back. For a brief moment, we are kids again, reaching across the table, bickering over the best ones. For Proust, nostalgia is baked into a warm Madeleine, but for me, it’s in the crunch of a Rye Ridge pickle, its acidity unmistakably redolent of a childhood shared with my siblings, dining at the deli, exchanging spit balls made from paper straws.
I grew up in a rather dysfunctional household—tensions ran really high, especially amongst my brothers and my father. But Rye Ridge was something of a panacea, a neutral space where conflict dissipated. My best childhood memories live there: chiding my brother for getting pickle juice on his new T-shirt, signaling the waiter for another bowl of pickles like a drunk demanding another round of tequila shots. We begged our parents for scratch-off lottery tickets and scraped at them with pennies from my mom’s wallet, celebrating even the smallest wins—never more than five dollars—with yet another round of pickles. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the place we felt the most at peace was a Jewish deli, evocative of the legacy of traditional food our family had grown up on. Though we aren’t that religious, the solace found in this place – and its magical pickles – is somewhat of a larger, cultural blanket.
This is not to say Rye Ridge pickles are the best in the world— they’re far from it. But the RRD pickles are, to me and my brothers, a catalyst for unity, and a brief moment of tranquility in the chaos of family life. These pickles will forever serve as an olive branch amongst the three of us.
