illustration by carolyn pollan
Jacob Abraham could usually be found behind the deli counter.
Dear Vance: What happened to Abraham’s Deli? It was one of my favorite places to eat downtown, but on a recent trip to Memphis, all I found was a parking lot. — P.M., Little Rock.
Dear P.M.: Early on the morning of February 19, 1991, the south wall of the three-story brick building at Main and Jackson collapsed into the empty lot next door. Within days, demolition crews pulled down the rest of Abraham’s Deli, located in a distinctive building at 338 North Main that had housed several businesses for almost 80 years.
As best as I can tell, the building with the crowned roofline was constructed around 1915. The Abe Schneider family opened the Columbia Ice Cream Parlor on the ground floor and later operated the Main & Jackson Restaurant there, serving customers for decades while maintaining a spacious residence above their business. Several children, including daughter Rosa Lee, were born there.
Meanwhile, Jacob Abraham’s family owned a successful meat-packing business on Warford. In the early 1940s, he met Rosa Lee, and they married on January 23, 1943. The Schneider and Abraham families must have been financially well-off; the wedding was held in the Claridge Hotel’s Balinese Ballroom, one of the swankiest spots in town. Normally a supper club, an altar was set up, “banked with sprays of white gladioli massed in tall floral baskets before a rich green background of palms and smilax, with cathedral tapers burning in tiered candelabra.”
That’s according to The Commercial Appeal, which also reported, “The bride will wear a wedding gown of gardenia white satin, fashioned on princess lines with seed pearls edging a sweetheart necklace. Her veil of misty illusion will fall from a heart-shaped halo of seed pearls, and she will carry a bridal bouquet of white Imperial orchids encircled with gardenias.”
photograph by steve davis
Abraham’s Deli occupied the ground floor of this building at North Main and Jackson. For years, Rosa Lee Abraham’s family lived on the top floors. This shows the building in 1979.
I only bring this up because years later, people probably noticed Rosa Lee and Jacob hard at work behind the counter of a tiny deli, handing out pastrami sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and never dreamed their wedding was such a high-society event. But wait — I’m getting ahead of my long-winded story,
Several years after the marriage, Jacob decided to leave the family business, opening a small sundry store in South Memphis, but then the Abrahams moved into the building on North Main owned by his wife’s family. That made sense; after her parents’ death, Rosa Lee and two brothers inherited the property, and this was a prime location. Other businesses along that block included Silverstein Watch Repair, Ash Radio Repair, Tresan’s Delicatessan, and Williams Upholstery, along with private homes and small apartment houses.
Directly across the street, nobody saw (or could have envisioned) a stainless-steel pyramid. In those days, the west side of North Main was home to Jay’s Valet Service Cleaners, Hanover Shoe Repair, Kosher Sanitary Meat Market, two beauty shops (Anne Moody’s and Mattie Taylor’s), and even the Union Mission.
At first, the Abrahams sold dry goods — bags of sugar and flour, tools, patent medicines, and other basic merchandise. Then — perhaps remembering the Schneider family’s early success — they opened a confectionary store, then a soda fountain, then a tavern. None of these apparently suited them, so in 1959 they transformed the tiny business into a café and deli.
In a later newspaper story, the Abrahams remembered the location as “charming but noisy. This was a transfer point for streetcars,” said Rosa Lee, “and people would buy fruit while they waited. It was a real thriving neighborhood.”
It was never fancy, inside or out, and not meant to be. “Just looking at this place, you’d never know to come in,” Jacob told a reporter in 1976. “It’s definitely not for tourists.”
The business name changed on a whim. “It’s funny,” Rosa Lee told a reporter. “A big Pabst Blue Ribbon sign out front called the place a café. Somebody broke the sign, and when the beer men came to replace it, they asked what I wanted it to say.” She told them to change “café” to “deli.”
Well, that little detail changed everything. They were doing okay — just okay — as a café, but she said, “A deli was what people seemed to be looking for, and business picked up.”
The Abrahams brought in a big deli counter and made room for tables and chairs. They added unusual items to their selections, and their Hungarian meatballs, corned beef, and pastrami sandwiches quickly brought in customers. It didn’t hurt that Abraham’s Deli also offered some 25 brands of beer, including imported brands, which was unusual for the time.
But it was never fancy, inside or out, and not meant to be. “Just looking at this place, you’d never know to come in,” Jacob told a reporter in 1976. “It’s definitely not for tourists.”
Even so, The Commercial Appeal noted it was always busy at lunchtime, drawing their clientele from nearby businesses. “Customers choose their lunches from the fare displayed on frosty trays behind a plastic screen. There are stuffed eggs, Polish sausages, jalapeño peppers, corned beef, boneless chicken, kosher franks, Hungarian meatballs, assorted coldcuts, and pickles out of Chicago.”
Business boomed when work began on the new Cook Convention Center down the street, and construction crews became their biggest customers. By 1984, newspapers referred to the deli as “a downtown institution” and it wasn’t unusual to find a line stretching out the door at lunchtime.
In a 1990 review, Commercial Appeal dining critic Fredric Koeppel wasn’t fond of the deli’s popular Hungarian meatballs (“bland, bland, bland”) but praised the other selections: “I loved both the Polish sausage and the bratwurst sandwiches. The Reuben was good, too. All these are hot, spicy, dense concoctions designed to deliver the maximum amount of terrific-tasting but bad-for-you food in a minimum of time and space.”
When work began across the street on the “Great American Pyramid,” as it was first known, one would think that would create a booming business for the little deli. Instead, it foreshadowed its downfall. Construction often blocked North Main, causing frustration for customers. But the death blow came when the building walls began to crack and crumble.
The Abrahams insisted that digging the foundation and driving the support beams for the Pyramid were damaging their ancient home. They also blamed vibrations from the new expressway ramps nearby. City officials and contractors disagreed. Even when the south wall began to bow outward and had to be braced by steel beams, customers jammed the place.
Jacob and Rosa Lee considered their options — moving or rebuilding — but in January 1991, announced they were closing, “for the safety of our customers.” Commercial Appeal reporter Wayne Risher shared the sad news with readers: “The deli had been gussied up a bit since the Great American Pyramid started going up, but the new awning and signs could not conceal its basic character: informal, somewhat rickety, and comfortable like a favorite chair.”
Noting that customers jammed the deli during its last days to pay their respects, “they did between bites of favorite items like deviled eggs, kosher pickles, and cakes baked by 19-year employee Martha Graham, standing in line on a tile floor that slopes gamely towards a badly bowed wall. They ordered off a menu that hangs alongside work gloves, hairnets, and ballpoint pens — throwbacks to the building’s many years as a neighborhood sundry store serving the Pinch district on the north end of downtown.”
Longtime customers were dismayed. Sam Alexy, who worked for the Shelby County government, lamented, “I don’t know where in town I’m going to find Hungarian meatball sandwiches.” Barry Bean, program director for WEVL radio, told a reporter, “We rate delis by how they compare to Abraham’s: ‘Almost as good as Abraham’s’ or ‘Nowhere near as good as Abraham’s.’”
Will Taylor, the golf professional at Olive Branch Country Club, told reporters he often drove all the way downtown to eat lunch at Abraham’s because “it’s like a monument. Plus, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham are like a father-mother combination.”
Meanwhile, those two owners of the deli seemed to take the closing better than their customers. “Oh, sure, I’ll miss it,” Jacob told The Commercial Appeal. “I spend more time here than at home.” Rosa Lee said they would close “without fanfare” on their last day. “I don’t know what else to do but lock the door, just like any other day.”
Just three weeks later, the empty building crashed to the ground. Jacob passed away in 1999, at age 79. Rosa Lee moved to Florida, where she died in 2018, age 94.
In his 1990 review, Koeppel shared the general opinion that customers weren’t drawn to Abraham’s for its atmosphere: “Abe’s is as unpretentious as a restaurant could be, displaying an amalgamation of decades of different uses. It’s homey, ramshackle environment matches the repose of its old neighborhood — a repose that will probably alter drastically when the Pyramid is complete.”
The building altered drastically, all right. But not in the way the owners — or Abraham Deli’s many customers — hoped.
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