Photo: IanPhilipMiller, Flickr
Milton Parker, who learned the deli business at an age when many men were retiring, died Friday from a respiratory condition, his son-in-law tells Slashfood.
"He took a little local restaurant and built it into a national [one]," Sandy Levine said Wednesday.
Parker joined the Carnegie Deli at the age of 58, transforming the 1937 delicatessen into a tourist favorite with his business partner, Leo Steiner.
"At the age of 58, he took the night shift -- we call it the graveyard shift -- so he could learn every facet of business," Levine said.
The deli found the limelight; Woody Allen used it as a setting in part of "Broadway Danny Rose.
"Today diners flock to the deli to nosh on open-faced sandwiches named Hamalot (Virginia ham with gravy and candied sweets) and Li'l Abner (beef brisket with gravy and fries) as well as traditional favorites with even more fanciful names: Fifty Ways to Love Your Liver (chopped liver, hard-boiled egg, onion, lettuce, tomato), Carnegie Haul (pastrami, tongue and salami with relish) and Bacon Whoopee (chicken salad with bacon, lettuce and tomato).
And no one loved the menu more than Parker.
"His favorite part was eating; his passion was eating," Levine said. "He would start off eating a foot-long frankfurter before he had his meal."
Steiner died in the late 1980s, but Parker pressed on with the deli. Carnegie produces its own meats at a facility in New Jersey. "We eliminated the middleman so we could get a perfect product," Levine said.
Fans of the deli's My Fair Latkes needn't worry. Closing the deli would have been the last thing Parker wanted, his family said.
"His life was the Carnegie Deli," Levine said.
