The 2nd Avenue Deli re-opened recently, a lot smaller than it used to be, and not on 2nd Avenue, where it used to be. It’s the most famous kosher delicatessen in America, even if it serves food on Saturdays, which I always thought wasn’t kosher. When I invited my kosher cousins to eat with me, they declined. By them, it wasn’t kosher.

Where Jews are concerned, and I’m one of them, nothing is easy.

Delicatessens, kosher or not, are confusing to Jews and non-Jews alike. First of all, the name "delicatessen" has been corrupted. Most places that call themselves “delis” aren’t delicatessens. They’re food shops selling all kind of ready-to-eat products, most of them appalling.

Real delicatessens, and 2nd Avenue Deli is one of them, sell homemade meat products with an Eastern European accent. The new 2nd Avenue Deli (it’s on East 33rd Street in Manhattan) fulfills that mandate exquisitely, and, unlike the old place, has added smoked fish. Traditionally, delicatessens never sold fish, but this is a modern delicatessen where the meats sleep with the fishes.

Although fish is non-essential to the delicatessen business, I thought I’d give it a try. I had the smoked salmon. It was okay, but not so good I’d recommend this as your go-to bagels-and-lox destination. The cream cheese is fake, which is necessary, since a kosher restaurant that sells meat can’t also sell dairy products. For phony cream cheese, it was good.

Most people think a kosher delicatessen sells big, fat sandwiches, the kind thick enough to please truck drivers or forest rangers (which kosher Jews never are). Still, two-inch sandwiches are pretty much the norm, and the 2nd Avenue Deli has plenty of them.

Everybody knows what makes a good sandwich: Fatty, flavorful meat—unless you’re dumb enough to order the roast turkey, in which case you get lean, boring meat. Which turkey boys deserve.

Pastrami is the standard by which a delicatessen is judged. At the old 2nd Avenue Deli (which, by the way, was actually on 2nd Avenue), the pastrami was lousy. I was probably the only person in New York who felt this way, but I was right. It was dry and tasteless. Everybody said it was great, because that was how you were supposed to feel. People have always had so much affection for this restaurant that even when the food was bad, they wouldn’t say a word.

The pastrami at the new place is terrific: fattier, spicier, more tender and more beautiful than before. It isn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it’s close. In case you like tongue (and who doesn’t?), the tongue might be the best I’ve ever had. In rounding out the sandwich experience, let me add this: The rye bread isn’t good. You can barely taste the rye flour—pretty much a universal problem today. Everybody wants delicatessen sandwiches on rye bread as long as it bread doesn’t actually taste like rye. The mustard is superb. The sour pickles are very good, the half-sours less so. Skip the corned beef and the brisket sandwiches: boring.

There’s one other category of cuisine served here: Old-world, Eastern European, Jewish standards. Nothing could be harder than evaluating dishes like potted meat balls and boiled beef in the pot. Here’s why: No Jew can agree on how they should taste.

Most ethnic cuisines come from a place, and everybody knows what it tasted like back in that place. The Jews never had a place. Mostly, they were chased from places.

If you eat in a dozen different Jewish homes, the food will taste different in every one. Every Jewish family is a distinct culinary place.

At the new 2nd Avenue Deli, the stuffed cabbage (ground beef and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves) is beautifully made. Nice ingredients, fine technique. It’s also so sweet I couldn’t eat it. I doubt this was an accident. Somebody in charge of the kitchen is preparing it the way his mother used to make it.

I can’t tell you if you’ll like it. You will for sure if you come from a family where the stuffed cabbage could have passed for dessert.

I will give you a different tip: There are lines there, particularly for an early lunch or an early dinner. (Jews, you should know, do not eat late.)

Try to talk your way into standing inside, where there’s a second line at the take-out counter. The people waiting outside in the cold get nothing. The people waiting inside get little snacks of chopped liver on bread.

I promise that you’re going to like the ultra-smooth chopped liver, even if your mother made it some other way.

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