The History of the Family Owned Ashkenaz Restaurants and Delis of Chicago, Illinois. (1910-2012)

The Ashkenaz restaurant, at 1432 W. Morse Avenue in Rogers Park, was one of the authentic delis, serving Vienna corned beef, Rosen's rye bread, Litberg bagels, and Vita lox.

1432 W. Morse Avenue in the Rogers Park community of Chicago, Illinois.

As you enter, there is a long delicatessen counter on the right filled with trays of amber smoked chubs, chopped chicken livers, potato salad, perogen (small baked pastries filled with chopped chicken livers and onion, etc.), gefilte fish, kishkes, and pickles. Gleaming red Vienna salamis hung from a rack on the wall.

One wall of the restaurant is somber brown; the other is a mosaic of green, blue, and yellow tiles, an imitation ─ intentional or not ─ of the colors used by Marc Chagall in his evocative paintings of Jewish life in the villages of old Russia.

Beyond the counter in front is an open kitchen manned by four cooks who prepare short orders and sandwiches. The waitresses were blonde buxom and inured to the constant chirping: "Sweetie, how about another cuppa?"

A steady hum of conversation is assertive, argumentative, and studded with friendly insults and retorts. "When are you going to retire?" a customer asks of a cook working at the meat slicer. "When I have your money!" the cook shoots back. A portly man with a Nikon camera says thru a mouthful of sauerkraut: "Was I busy? Today, I shot two weddings and a bar mitzvah."

Meanwhile, everybody eats. Orders were ample, with the potato salad partly hiding the smoked fish and moderate prices. The Ashkenaz menu lists over 100 dishes, and 35 dinners are served weekly. Not all the items are Jewish cuisine ─ beef stew is listed next to gefilte fish, and barbecued spareribs next to stuffed kishkes with brown sauce.

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Comedian Shecky Greene was a once-famous son of the Rogers Park neighborhood. We know the true nature of Shecky Greene’s attachment to Ashkenaz and of the Shecky Greene sandwich because long-time New York Times sports writer Ira Berkow is also a native of the Morse Avenue neighborhood and wrote about it for the Tribune.

Berkow wrote,  "The Shecky Greene sandwich was named in his honor at Ashkenaz as the neighborhood's ultimate tribute to a local boy made good. The sandwich consisted of a double-decker of corned beef and egg, lettuce, tomato and a generous dollop of potato salad spilling onto the plate. That and their barbecue beef sandwich with the special Ashkenaz hot sauce that made you cross-eyed with the first taste were favorites in the mid-1950s."

Shecky Greene Comedian, 1965.

Kishkes with Brown Sauce

At the counter's far end was an archway leading to a dining room served from a second kitchen in the rear. The atmosphere in the dining room is relaxed and casual, and the diners chat from table to table. The tone is that of a family gathering.

Sam Ashkenaz at the Deli Counter.

Sam Ashkenaz, the owner, had a gentle manner that masks his shrewd business ability. He looked and spoke somewhat like entertainer George Burns, with a raspy but soothing voice and a twinkling expression. It was often hard to tell whether he was serious. One of his favorite topics of conversation was the origin of the restaurant.

His parents, George and Ada Ashkenaz, immigrated from Russia early in the 1900s and first opened a small delicatessen store near Roosevelt and Karlov in 1910. 

When the Jewish population moved north and west to the suburbs, the Ashkenaz family moved to Rogers Park, opening their first deli on Morse Avenue. It was a 10 by 30 feet small restaurant in which Ada Ashkenaz cooked in a tiny kitchen at the rear. During the mid-30s, they acquired a space at 1432 West Morse Avenue and opened a new restaurant. It burned in 1939, and the couple had no insurance.

Noodle Kugel

Sam Ashkenaz graduated from Purdue that year with a degree in electrical engineering. He joined his parents to help recoup the loss, borrowed money from the restaurant's suppliers, fixed the restaurant and was back in business in 1940.

Potato Latkes

At Ashkenaz, a typical dinner may start with an appetizer such as chopped chicken livers, various kinds of herring, or a piece of small gefilte fish with red beet horseradish.

Gefilte Fish

Homemade Chicken Soup with Kreplach

Next is chicken soup with matzo balls made entirely of matzo-meal dough or kreplach (a meat-filled dumpling for chicken soup). Chicken soup was served daily, and then there were the day's soups, such as barley, potato, bean, or cabbage ─ thick, rich, with a minimum of liquid. "We don't serve a cup of soup," said Sam Ashkenaz with contempt. "Ten-ounce bowl with the dinner, 12-ounce bowl a la carte." 

The best-seller was Corned Beef and Pastrami sandwiches. They served up over a ½ ton (1,000 pounds) of Corned Beef per month. 

Corned Beef - Sandwiches Piled High!

The "Family Recipe" blintzes were a popular entree; a thin pancake rolled and filled with cheese topped with fresh fruit, meat-filled or fruit-filled blintzes were invariably served with a decent dollop of sour cream.

Cheese Blintz with Cherries.

Jewish cuisine reaches a hedonistic gastronomic status in its sweet and sour cooking of meats and fish, and one of Ashkenaz's specialties was sweet and sour pickled trout. Most pickled fish is cooked with lemon as the souring agent, but Ashkenaz has a secret souring ingredient that produces a more piquant flavor. Many housewives came to Ashkenaz and asked how the flavor of their pickled trout is derived, but did he tell?

The restaurant had a bakery with a line of pastries that included an excellent cheesecake. A large deli in New York City, Reuben's, makes a cherry cheesecake that some Chicagoans ordered by mail.

Ashkenaz admits freely that Reuben's cheesecake is delicious, but he points out that it is heavy and difficult to eat after a good meal, while his cheesecake is lighter. 

After sampling a slice, you'd have to agree with him. Ashkenaz's cheesecake was topped with a triumphal glace, the color of rubies, filled with fresh strawberries.

So, what is a deli? It's a restaurant serving a great variety of foods with exotic flavors. Although it is Jewish, the food is derived from many European cultures. It isn't haute cuisine such as that created by French chefs like Escoffier; it is humble food ─ Jews who came here from Europe were poor.

But the food is prepared with loving care; its Escoffier was a formidable matriarch, the Jewish mother, who believed "Nobody should go away hungry." Is it possible that this type of restaurant, with its superior menu and vivacious atmosphere, is on the way out? You should live so long.

Ashkenaz Restaurant and Delicatessen was an institution that presided over Morse Avenue for years, within the shadow of the "L" tracks, until the late 1970s when they sold the Morse location.

Though there are different versions of why and how Sam Ashkenaz left the Morse location, he purposely moved the restaurant directly to the then brand-new Northbrook Court in 1976. That news made the Daily News Beeline column in December 1975. In fact, the once humble neighborhood Jewish restaurant was considered a real draw by Northbrook Court and by what would be one of its more high-profile tenants.

So, how long did Ashkenaz last at Northbrook Court? The trail abruptly ends in newspapers and on the internet, so I have no idea. It probably wasn't long since several people from the Northbrook area only slightly remembered that Ashkenaz was ever there. Sam Ashkenaz's son, Steve, worked at the local Carnegie Deli in 1990 and briefly at another deli that made the paper in 1989. Steve would have been at the family business if it were still around, so we can assume that Sam Ashkenaz's restaurant in Northbrook Court lasted about ten years or less.

After Ashkenaz left Morse Street, a place called "Ashkey's" replaced it, also serving Jewish deli food—apparently run by new people pirating the old name. A fire destroyed the building in 1978, ending Ashkey's, whoever owned it.

In the late 1970s, an Ashkenaz location would temporarily pop up in the North Shore suburb Wilmette at 3223 West Lake Street. 

Sam Ashkenaz died on November 25, 1985, at 71 years old. 

Ashkenaz Delicatessen, 12 East Cedar Street, Chicago.

A short-lived location opened at 3223 West Lake Street; another place at 12 East Cedar operated from about 1978 until 2012. However, those locations are always mentioned in newspapers as belonging to a corporation, and it's unclear if the Ashkenaz family ever owned either spot. But the Cedar location was open long enough—almost 35 years—to be called a "neighborhood staple." 

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A Jewish resident in the Gold Coast neighborhood said that the first two calls you make when someone dies are to the decesed family and to Ashkenaz to order deli trays for shiva. That suggests both the overlooked deli’s importance to its neighborhood . . .  and why it closed, as its core clientele increasingly passed away.

Restauranteur Howard Cohan bought the business in 2005. It was so well known that, strangely, New York Magazine, of all places, noted its passing in 2012.

VISIT OUR ASHKENAZ DELI & RESTAURANT SOUVENIR SHOP

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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Daniel Hale Williams Completes First Open-Heart Surgery in Chicago in 1893.

Daniel Hale Williams was the son of a barber, founded the first negro-owned hospital in America, and performed the world's first successful heart surgery in 1893.

July 10, 1893

Williams was born in 1858 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the fifth of seven children. After his father died, his mother, Sara Price Williams, moved the family several times. Young Daniel started as a shoemaker but quickly knew he wanted more education. He completed secondary school in Wisconsin. At age 20, Williams became an apprentice to a former surgeon general for Wisconsin. Williams studied medicine at Chicago Medical College.

After his internship, he went into private practice in an integrated neighborhood on Chicago's south side. He soon began teaching anatomy at Chicago Medical College and served as surgeon to the City Railway Company. In 1889, the governor of Illinois appointed him to the state's board of health.

Determined that Chicago should have a hospital where negro and white doctors could study, and negro nurses could receive training, Williams rallied for a hospital open to all races. After months of hard work, he opened Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses on May 4, 1891, the country's first interracial hospital and nursing school.

1891-1893: 29th and Dearborn Streets, Chicago.

One hot summer night in 1893, a young Chicagoan named James Cornish was stabbed in the chest and rushed to Provident. When Cornish started to go into shock, Williams suspected a deeper wound near the heart. He asked six doctors (four white, two negro) to observe while he operated. In a cramped operating room with crude anesthesia, Williams inspected the wound between two ribs, exposing the breastbone. He cut the rib cartilage and created a small trapdoor to the heart.

1894-1908: 36th and South Dearborn Streets, Chicago.

Underneath, he found a damaged left internal mammary artery and sutured it. Then, inspecting the pericardium (the sac around the heart), he saw that the knife had left a gash near the right coronary artery. With the heart beating and transfusion impossible, Williams rinsed the wound with salt solution, held the edges of the palpitating wound with forceps, and sewed them together. Just 51 days after his apparently lethal wound, James Cornish walked out of the hospital. He lived for over 20 years after the surgery. The landmark operation was hailed in the press.

In 1894, Dr. Williams became chief surgeon of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., the most prestigious medical post available to Negros then. There, he made improvements that reduced the hospital's mortality rate. In 1895, he helped organize the National Medical Association for negro professionals barred from the American Medical Association. Williams returned to Chicago and continued as a surgeon. In 1913, he became the first negro to be inducted into the American College of Surgeons.

1908-1933: 1315 West Garfield Boulevard, Chicago.

As a sign of the esteem of the negro medical community, until this day, a "code blue" at the Howard University Hospital emergency room is called a "Dr. Dan." In words that could later be said of Vivien Thomas, a colleague wrote, "His greatest pride was that directly or indirectly, he had a hand in the making of most of the outstanding Negro surgeons of the current generation."

Provident Hospital began offering graduate education for Black medical school graduates in 1917.

Dr. Williams died in 1931. The Daniel Hale Williams Medical Reading Club in Washington, D.C., commemorates his achievements.

1891-1893: 29th and Dearborn Streets. The hospital's first location was a three-story brick house with 12 beds.

1894-1908: 36th and South Dearborn Streets. Designed for hospital use with 50 beds.

Both of the above locations were in the Douglas Community and in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, which was the center of the city's negro community at the time.

1908-1933: 1315 West Garfield Boulevard.

1933-1987: 426 East 51st Street, Chicago.

1993-Pres: 500 East 51st Street, Chicago.

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The Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine at DuSable (High School), 4934 South Wabash (Bronzeville neighborhood), Chicago, is a medical magnet school named in his honor when it opened in September 2005. Helping minority students get into medical school and become future members of the medical field is central to Daniel Hale Williams' mission and vision.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Lunchtime Theater - The History of the Illinois River.

THE DIGITAL RESEARCH LIBRARY OF ILLINOIS HISTORY JOURNAL™ PRESENTS

THE LUNCHTIME THEATER.

The History of the Illinois River.

The opening of the Illinois River Conference from October of 2011.

Kohlsaat and Company, Commercial Bakery and Lunch Establishment, Chicago, Illinois.

Herman Henry (H. H.) Kohlsaat was born March 22, 1853, in Albion, Edwards County, Illinois, one of six children of Reimer and Sarah (Hall) Kohlsaat. Reimer and Sarah Kohlsaat were abolitionists whose home was reportedly a station on the Underground Railroad. The Kohlsaat family moved to Galena, Illinois, in 1854, and they moved to Chicago in 1865.

He became a traveling salesman, eventually working for Blake, Shaw, and Company at Adams & Clinton, a wholesale bakery owned by R. Nelson Blake, who was to become Kohlsaat’s father-in-law. In 1880 Kohlsaat married Mabel E. Blake and became a junior partner of Blake, Shaw, and Company in charge of a bakery-lunch establishment in the city.

In 1883 he brought out Blake, Shaw, and Company’s interest in the establishment. He started H.H. Kohlsaat and Company, which was one of the largest baking establishments in Chicago for about thirty years.

CHICAGO WHITE PAGES, JUNE 1908:

H.H. Kohlstaat Resident Address: 186 Lincoln Park Boulevard, Chicago

H.H. Kohlstaat & Company (Wholesale Bakery): 1701 South Wabash, Chicago

H. H. Kohlsaat Bakery, east side of the 1700 block S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

He opened several lunch stores, which drew good patronage from the businessmen of the Loop district.

In 1888 Kohlsaat was an alternate delegate at the Republican national convention held in Chicago. He became an early supporter of William McKinley, then Governor of Ohio, working for his nomination and election to the presidency in 1896. Kohlsaat was a friend, confidant, and advisor of five United States Presidents: McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, and Harding.

In 1891, Kohlsaat purchased a half-interest in the Chicago newspaper Inter-Ocean. In 1894 Kohlsaat abandoned his interest in the Inter-Ocean and purchased the Chicago Times-Herald and the Evening Post. He converted the papers from Democratic to independent Republican organs.

His influence in the Republican Party helped draft the gold-standards plank during the 1896 convention in St. Louis. McKinley’s ensuing campaign for the presidency against free Silverite William Jennings Bryan was ultimately won on the gold standard issues.

In 1901 Kohlsaat purchased the Chicago Record from Victor F. Lawson and combined it with the Times-Herald, naming the new paper the Record-Herald. Kohlsaat resigned the editorship of the Record-Herald for a time to devote himself to his real estate interests but later regained control in 1910. He remained editor of the Record-Herald for two years, and then he returned to edit the Inter-Ocean. Kohlsaat left the Inter-Ocean after a year and became a member of the staff of the New York Times.

Kohlsaat died October 17, 1924, in Washington, D.C., at the home of Herbert Hoover.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Lunchtime Theater - The Chicago Gangsters Subterranean Secrets, Mysteries and Subterranean Worlds.

THE DIGITAL RESEARCH LIBRARY OF ILLINOIS HISTORY JOURNAL™ PRESENTS

THE LUNCHTIME THEATER.

The Chicago Gangsters Subterranean Secrets, Mysteries, and Subterranean Worlds

RUNTIME [1:10:00]

The Chicago Outfit (or simply the Outfit), also known as the Chicago Mafia, Chicago Mob, or Chicago Syndicate, is an Italian American crime syndicate based in Chicago, Illinois. Dating back to the 1910s, it is part of the American Mafia. Originating in South Side Chicago, the Outfit rose to power in the 1920s under the control of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. The period was marked by bloody gang wars for the distribution of illegal alcohol during Prohibition. Since then, the Outfit has been involved in a wide range of criminal activities including, loansharking, gambling, murder, prostitution, extortion, political corruption, and murder amongst others. Although the Outfit had no true monopoly on organized crime in Chicago they were by far the biggest criminal organization in the Midwestern United States. The Outfit's control at its peak reached throughout the western and eastern United States to places as far away as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and parts of Florida.

Higher law enforcement investigations and general attrition led to the Outfits gradual decline since the late 20th century. As of 2007, the Outfit's size is estimated to be 28 official members (composing its core group) and over 100 associates. The Old Neighborhood Italian American Club is considered to be the hangout of Old Timers, as they live out their golden years. The Club's founder was Angelo J. LaPietra "The Hook", who at the time of his death in 1999 was the main Council. The Chicago Outfit is currently believed to be led by John DiFronzo.

Severely injured in an assassination attempt by the North Side Mob in January 1925, the shaken Torrio returned to Italy and handed over control of the business to Capone. Capone was notorious during Prohibition for his control of the Chicago underworld and his bitter rivalries with gangsters such as George "Bugs" Moran and Earl "Hymie" Weiss. Raking in vast amounts of money (some estimates were that between 1925 and 1930 Capone was making $100 million a year), the Chicago kingpin was largely immune to prosecution because of witness intimidation and the bribing of city officials. The Chicago Outfit under Al Capone's leadership was certainly one of the most dangerous gangs in the world. In the 1930s, Al Capone and his successor, Frank Nitti, developed the Outfit rapidly in all the surrounding areas.

One of the prime areas of interest was in Canada, the main source of alcohol which the Outfit was smuggling into the States. This illicit alcohol was then distributed to all the "titty bars" (brothels) of Chicago. During prohibition, this was one of the greatest sources of income for the Outfit. The Outfit, as established by Capone, functioned on relationships with a high degree of trust between the gangsters and the "boss of bosses".

The Boss controlled the heads of various divisions of the outfit through a system of informants placed throughout the various levels of the organization. Anyone who betrayed the honor of the organization was executed. Among the most active representatives of the Al Capone Outfit was "Happy Memories" DeLuca (assets in Illinois and Wisconsin), Bob Calandra (Ontario), Vince DeLuca, Tom Ciampelletti (Montreal) and Frank Nitti, who acted as the intermediary between Al Capone, the Boss, and the other gangsters. Frankie La Porte and Ross Prio out of Chicago Heights carried some heavyweight with Capone organizing his gang into an empire. Frankie La Porte, being Sicilian and having the ability to work in confidence with New York gangsters Joe Bonanno and Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was also Sicilian, is believed to have been Capone's connection to the Commission.

While Al Capone was in charge of the Chicago Outfit it has been reported that some members of the organization would take the train from Chicago to Wabash County, Illinois and stay at a remote hotel called the Grand Rapids Hotel on the Wabash River next to the Grand Rapids Dam. The hotel was only in existence for nine years but many residents of the area remember seeing men who claimed to be from the Chicago Outfit at the Grand Rapids Hotel. Suspiciously, the Grand Rapids Hotel was burned down by a man with one leg who dropped a blowtorch.