Tuesday, October 4, 7:00 pm
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Every culture has its own customs to usher in the new year. Chinese New Year is marked with a festival of lanterns and the sound of firecrackers. In Ecuador, New Year’s Eve is spent burning effigies of politicians. During Diwali, the Hindu New Year’s festival, thousands of small oil lamps and candles are lit in honor of the goddess of good fortune. And on the two nights of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, people all over the world come together to celebrate—and, of course, to eat. For this year’s festivity, the James Beard Foundation has asked Chris Metz of Artie’s New York Delicatessen to cook a meal that will ensure a sweet year to come.

Though it’s been open for little more than half a decade, Artie’s New York Delicatessen “feels as though it has been part of the Upper West Side forever,” according to Joan Reminick in Newsday. Under the direction of chef and co-owner Chris Metz, Artie’s serves traditional New York deli specialties in a retro setting that recalls the Lower East Side of days past. “The food is as genuine as it gets,” wrote Time Out New York, while New York magazine’s Ben Ryder Howe called the deli “worth going out of your way for,” and sang the praises of its “classic, shimmering chicken soup, complete with airy matzo balls.”

Metz is a Brooklyn native and a graduate of Syracuse University who gave up a career in market research to become a chef. After working the line at several Long Island restaurants, he crossed the river to cook with Anne Rosenzweig at Manhattan’s Arcadia before heading off to London, where he attended Le Cordon Bleu. Metz returned to New York after graduating, working in various restaurants and eventually becoming executive chef at Abigael’s Grill and King David Deli, where he met Jeffrey Bank. In 1996 restaurateur Artie Cutler recruited the two to help him fulfill his dream of opening a 1930s-style deli in New York. The project was put on hold for three years following Cutler’s untimely death, but in 1999 the pair teamed up with Cutler’s widow, Alice, to open an eatery that not only honors Cutler’s vision, but also “pays tribute to a vital but fading part of the city’s culinary heritage,” according to Megan O. Steintrager of Time Out.

L’shanah tova tikataivu. Happy New Year!