WHS 88401
Before the crazy toys on East Wash, there was the no-nonsense original deli on State Street.
A city is in sorrow following the January 3 announcement that Ella’s Deli will close in a few weeks, unless a purchaser can be found. Longtime Madisonians know that Ella’s whimsical, playful parlor on East Washington Avenue is the last of a legacy that reaches back more than 55 years, to 425 State St.
Today that address belongs to Hawk’s Bar and Grill, but it was there that Ella Hirschfeld opened her restaurant on July 4, 1963. It had none of the toy and circus memorabilia of the east side deli, but it was just as novel.
The original Ella’s was very New York-style, like a more polite Carnegie Deli, with a fantastic dessert menu. For many white-bread Midwesterners, it was a first and delicious taste of east coast Jewish-style cuisine.
Throughout the ‘60s, when downtown storefronts were a parade of plywood because of anti-war protests, Ella’s was unscathed. It was a hangout for students, hippies and East Coast ex-pats.
The non-smoking section, with booths and mirrors along the walls, created an “infinity room” of sorts, because the reflections of reflections (of reflections) provided a time-tunnel effect. It was the best people-watching in town. The smokers had only travel posters.
Ella’s on State actually goes back to 1950, when Lillian and Martin Rosen opened Rosen’s Delicatessen. Lillian told me years ago that she and her husband introduced a new sandwich to Madison — the sub. As the Wisconsin State Journal reported in 1962, this was “the ‘submarine’ specialty.” As sandwiches went, it was “surely one of the biggest in town.”
Martin worked long, hard hours, Lillian told me in an interview for The Capital Times in 1993. Then “he suffered his first heart attack, and at that point we sold the business to Ella.” Ella herself owned it only three years. She sold her namesake business to the late Nathan Balkin, who built its reputation.
The Balkin family opened the East Washington location in 1976 and Balkin’s son and daughter-in-law, Ken and Judy, are still the owners.
From the 1960s, there was a massive hand-written menu with scroll-like decorations. Lean corned beef, matzo ball soup, appetizer-sized portions of chopped liver, gefilte fish or lox, knockwurst, Polish and Italian sausages, and big, plump hot dogs — these were all made with kosher meats.
And the fabulous desserts, crowned by the menu’s “Number One,” the grilled hot fudge pound cake sundae, invented by Nathan. It has remained Madison’s manna.
In the early 1990s Bonnie and Gordy Hocking bought the State Street operation, installed new booths, and soldiered on. “Sometimes it’s difficult, because our kosher meat comes from Chicago,” their daughter, Bobbette, told me at the time. “If they’re out, they’re out.”
And a few years later Ella’s on State was out of business. And now, so too goes the East Washington location. But after that’s gone, we’ll still recall the deathless words that once adorned Ella’s State Street counter, surprising many a diner:
“Checks, no credit cards.”
