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“Musicians don’t work very much,” Zach Frankel says with a smile. His brother Alex, of the DFA duo Holy Ghost!, laughs. The brothers have just opened Frankel’s Delicatessen & Appetizing in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, so Zach has thought about this a bit—"this" meaning, why it seems like more and more musicians are embracing their inner-gourmand as of late. “They have plenty of time to eat food and talk about food,” he says, “and meet up with their friends to talk about and eat food.”
Zach’s idea about the musician lifestyle does hold some water, but there’s got to be more to it than that. On one hand, bands tour, so their members have more opportunities than most to see the world and try different foods along the way. On the other hand, they ride in vans and busses down long stretches of highway where their culinary options involve a drive-thru, maybe Waffle House if they’re lucky. Then there’s the day job thing. There’s a decent chance someone from your favorite band, before they “made it” (whatever that even means these days), found themselves bussing tables, taking orders, cooking on the line, or bartending.
Alex would like to edit his younger brother’s theory: It’s not that musicians don’t work very much, it’s that they don’t usually have to wake up early because of when they work. “We can meet up and have late dinners.”
There’s a different energy in a restaurant past a certain time, when all the first dates and business meetings are winding down, when the drinks seem to pour easier and the people there actually seem to like each other. Of course, these boozy late-night dinners lead to rough mornings (or early afternoons, to be more accurate), and that’s where one of the most intriguing items on the Frankels' menu comes in. The basic New York City egg and cheese sandwich, a staple of any hangover recovery program, is paired with another local favorite, pastrami. This is a sandwich that basically dares you to go out and get drunk just to have an excuse to eat one the next morning.
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On a recent day at Frankel’s, we spotted Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo and the greatest mean-mugged dog ever, Sammie.
Late nights and long tours aside, the Frankel brothers’ new deli is far more than an excuse to flex their knowledge, like Alex’s label boss James Murphy did last year when he opened the Four Horsemen wine bar in Williamsburg. This runs a little deeper than that—it’s something from their past.
“The brisket we grew up on is nothing like what you see in restaurants,” Alex says of their sweet, salty, and sour brisket, a combination of their grandmother’s recipe mixed with chef Ashley Berman’s grandmothers’ very different takes on the Jewish staple. This is the kind of comfort food the brothers grew up eating, just like their parents, and their parents’ parents. The Frankels aren’t rewriting the rules or doing anything totally out there; they’re paying tribute. But serving some of the most iconic foods in one of the most famous food cities in the world isn’t necessarily an easy task.
While the Frankels’ brisket was already well-known in some circles (“Our friend A-Trak has a Hanukkah party, and four years ago we started bringing the brisket because people freaked out,” Alex says), when it was announced that the brothers were opening a Jewish-style deli, it seemed obvious that they were wearing their influences on their sleeves, namely Manhattan food landmarks Barney Greengrass and Russ & Daughters. Sure, musicians often say an album or specific era influenced them when recording, but New York City food is a different story. You can be an iconoclast, like Mile End’s Noah Bernamoff, who went from playing bass in the band the Lovely Feathers to pairing Montreal-style smoked meats with bagels—something still considered sacrilege in certain food circles. Or you can do what the Frankels are doing, side more with tradition. Both paths are treacherous in their own ways in the fast-moving New York food scene. Like music, tastes are always changing and critics can ruin you.
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Here’s my general rule of thumb for any place that prominently boasts bagels and smoked fish as a centerpiece of the menu: If the whitefish sucks, walk out. That, I believe, is the best measuring stick, and the stuff they serve at Frankel’s, I swear, might be some of the best I’ve ever had. Making good whitefish salad is incredibly difficult and fraught with pitfalls ranging in severity from being too chunky or creamy, all the way to tasting like cold fish paste (literally like you mashed up whitefish with Elmer’s). The brothers’ whitefish is meaty and hearty, but also doesn’t weigh you down after you’ve had it, so there’s room for more. Which is good, because there’s definitely more worth eating at Frankel’s.
Since the most important thing is taken care of, there’s the other aspect of their story, and that’s the music. With the help of friends like El-P and Despot as investors, the brothers have made their deli as close to a DIY effort as you can ask for in a new Brooklyn restaurant. They aren’t part of a corporate restaurant empire, and while Zach and Chef Berman both come from food backgrounds (Berman was a longtime food stylist who worked with Zach at Brooklyn's Meat Hook), there’s no celebrity chef attached to the project. Yet their friends were still willing to get involved. “The first people we asked to be partners just said, 'Yeah, sure,' just like that,” Alex says. “People really trusted us because when two brothers say they’re going to do something, people know they’re going to do it.” He also mentions Andrew Raposo, who was in Midnight Magic and Hercules and Love Affair, as the first person they approached as a partner. “After him, everyone came in,” Alex says.
Of course, there are still little things they’re figuring out, like managing the lunch rush, smoking enough meat so they won’t run out by dinner, and most importantly, queuing up the deli’s daily soundtrack. Alex is in charge of that, and when I ask what they tend to hear, Zach mentions the classical stuff his brother was playing during the morning rush. “Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians,” Alex replies. I can see how Reich’s love of repetition might keep things humming along and give a nice flow to a long line of hungry customers looking for kippered salmon or latkes topped with caviar.
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The brothers behind the counter during lunch rush, a few days after opening.
Ultimately, what this all boils down to is feeling. No matter how good your brisket or lox are, if it doesn’t have neshama (the Hebrew word for “spirit”), then it won’t work out. Frankel’s looks great—with bright white subway tiles, a big red neon sign, classic hand-painted lettering, and bottles of U-bet syrup on the shelves next to boxes of matzo—but more importantly, the brothers’ love for what they’re making is evident. Incidental but telling proof that this is more than just a side business or a hobby for Alex when he isn’t making music (which he’ll continue to do with Holy Ghost!, with a new EP out later this month) arrives as he points to his hat, embroidered with the Frankel name, and says, “I would never wear my band merch.”