I have a new favorite Jewish food.

Knish** (see below)

I cannot believe Robin has not told me about these before.

I don't have a picture of my knish, probably because I inhaled it too quickly, but I did want to share with you a picture of the restaurant where I met my first knish. Notice all the walkers. I guess you can tell the quality of a good deli by the number of old people who frequent it. By the number of these walkers (more on other wall), this place should be Zagat rated.

While I had my phone/camera out, I thought I'd take a picture of my pumpernickle bagel. The way I cropped it, it looks a little (a lot actually) like Baxter's back side.

It dawned on me while we were eavesdrooping, I mean eating, why I love deli's so much. When I'm in a good one, I feel like I'm in NYC.

I love to listen in on peoples' conversations. I heard one old man say to another old man, "I don'TT know VATT is going on with my kiDDSS. They tell me, "Daddy. You neeDD to geTT a passporTTT". VATT the hell I need passporTT for?

Then there were two old ladies chatting about the price of chicken. Pennsylvannia Dutch evidently has the best price in Hollywood.

I didn't like the waitress very much at first. She won me over in the end, though, when we were paying and she came up to me to tell me what a beautiful purse I was carrying.

** A knish (pronounced /kˈnɪʃ/ — the "k" is pronounced) is a German, Eastern European, and Yiddish snack food made popular in North America by Jewish immigrants, eaten widely by Jewish and non-Jewish peoples alike. A knish consists of a filling covered with dough that is either baked, grilled, or deep fried. Knishes can be purchased from street vendors in urban areas with a large Jewish population, sometimes at a hot dog stand.

In the most traditional versions, the filling is made entirely of mashed potato, ground meat, sauerkraut, onions, kasha (buckwheat groats) or cheese. More modern varieties of fillings feature sweet potatoes, black beans, fruit, broccoli, tofu or spinach.

Many cultures have variations on baked, grilled, or fried dough-covered snacks similar to the knish: the Cornish pasty, the Scottish Bridie, the Jamaican patty, the Spanish and Latin American empanada, the Portuguese rissole, the Italian calzone, the South Asian samosa, the Russian pirozhki, and the Middle Eastern fatayer.

Knishes may be round, rectangular or square. They may be entirely covered in dough or some of the filling may peek out of the top. Sizes range from those that can be eaten in a single bite hors d'oeuvre to sandwich-sized.