Who really had a hand in St. Patrick's Day's most famous dish

LIBERTY 

In her later years, Rose Kravitz got only one day a year to cut the corned beef at the deli she started.

That day was St. Patrick’s Day, when Corned Beef Fest was in full bloom at Kravitz Delicatessen.

“She loved the idea of Corned Beef Fest,” said Jack Kravitz, Rose’s son who now runs the Belmont Avenue deli and its three other locations.

Jack keeps in mind his mother’s particular way of cutting the corned beef.

In her eyes, part of the corned beef pays for the ingredients in the food at the deli, the labor to run the deli and the cost to keep the lights on. A very important part of the corned beef comes at the end – where the profit sits.

“If you don’t cut down to the end, then you are throwing away my profit,” Rose would say.

This week, there will be plenty of corned beef cut right down to the end for another Corned Beef Fest, a tradition at Kravitz Deli for 10 years.

Corned beef is pickled beef brisket. It’s pickled. It’s boiled. And then it’s sliced to perfection.

Brisket, as Jack explained, is the meat of the Jewish community.

“When Jews came to this country, they were poor,” he said. “They were eating cuts of meat that would have been thrown away.”

The Irish also came to the country poor. They were in search of the boiled bacon they had back home, but it couldn’t be found.

Read how the cultures combined to produce corned beef in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.