THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604270331
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Mike's Colley Deli lox its doors today, for good.
That's a cheesy pun, admittedly, but this is one of those death-of-a-landmark stories, and a sad one. So forgive us a little smile through our chopped-onion tears.
For more than 50 years Mike's Deli has been a meridian point on Colley Avenue in Ghent, where restaurant fare runs from radicchio salads and faux Mexico at one end of the street to Whoppertown speakerphones screeching ``You want fries with that?'' at the other.
Mike's is dead-center Colley Avenue, geographically and gastronomically. Real food. Real people. Real hot mustard.
And real hard work, if you ask Norman Prince, who bought the place in 1977 from Mike Horenstein, who still lives nearby. The original Mike put a deli on that same block in 1942, when Norfolk was a sailor town going to war. And his parents opened the old Baltimore Delicatessen on Church Street in 1917 - when Norfolk was, well, a sailor town going to war.
Prince is retreating after a skirmish of his own, with his landlord, and a work pace that would melt a Marine.
``It's been seven days a week, week in and week out, for too many years now,'' he said with a sigh as he readied for a final Friday lunch rush. ``I'm just too old for that, truthfully.'' He's 63.
``The body can just take so much. I've got a missing kidney, an artificial knee, I had a heart attack in '92. My doctor tells me, `You think you're a hero, but you're gonna pay for it later.' So I'm just going to take a much-needed rest.''
The leaky roof, the clapped-out air conditioning, the bureaucratic hassles, and months of hopeless woofing with his landlord's lawyers: It all just pointed to a short-term lease with long-term problems and not a pickle's worth of profit, Prince figures.
Ghent is expensive turf now, he said, and it's hard to pay rising rents from the profits on 65-cent coffees and 95-cent bagels. And there's talk of somebody putting in an ice cream parlor right across the street, at the vacant gas station, in a neighborhood already overrun by restaurants.
Not a lot of them, though, have a bill of fare quite like Mike's Colley Deli. You could get a salad or a nice, safe, smoked-turkey sandwich, but much of Mike's menu was a cardiovascular free-fire zone. Who else these days has the courage to slap together a great big liverwurst sandwich under a throbbing awning of Muenster and mayo?
The ``Sailor'' alone - knockwurst, pastrami and Swiss - was enough to leave a heart surgeon weeping for mercy. Or maybe it was just the horseradish.
And the cheeses - oy, did we mention the cheeses? Just sniffing them could slam your arteries tighter than the Midtown Tunnel on a Friday afternoon.
Prince holds one sandwich - Norman's Artery Clogger - responsible for his 1992 heart attack. Hard salami, sweet peppers & onion on a bagel. ``Yeah, that's the one that got me,'' he said, pointing to a menu, grinning. ``That was my favorite. I eat a lot more turkey now.''
Prince was telling these tales over a midmorning coffee as a slow stream of tradesmen and customers stopped by. Best wishes all around. ``I've met a lot of friends here,'' said Frances Zerpoli, ``and we are not happy, not at all. I'm so sorry to see this place close.''
Zerpoli, a woman of a certain age, is a back-table fixture at Mike's, where she'll nurse a coffee and an unbroken string of cigarettes and chatter with the waitresses. ``She'll come in at 9 or so, get her some toast,'' Prince said, ``and sometimes you turn around and it's 4 o'clock and she's still here.
``We do have a crew here, the regulars. Tell you what kind of people they are. My daughter got married a few weeks back, so I shut the store on a Sunday - hey, it's my daughter's wedding, I've gotta be there, right?
``So I put this sign in the window about going to the wedding, and next thing you know customers start dropping off presents for her. Now, how do you like that? Nothing fancy or expensive, mind you, but the idea that they'd thought to do that for us.''
Norman and Sheila Prince have three children, each of whom has pitched in from time to time, especially during Norman's medical interludes or his rare vacations. None wanted to pick up the business when he let it go.
``My wife said maybe one of the kids would take it over,'' Prince said, ``but every one of them said, `No way.' Too much work involved.'' Besides, two of them already have jobs and the third is in school. Each has a sandwich on the menu: Daniel's Bellyache, Rachael's Mishmash and Michael's Ulcer. Right above Daddy's famous Artery Clogger.
So they'll close tonight, have a little party, then spend Sunday and Monday cleaning before the ubiquitous ``Col.'' Calvin Zedd comes by Tuesday to auction off whatever's left.
Ask what's next for Prince and you get a couple of maybes and possiblys. And then the idea emerges that if he finds the right place, and the right circumstances, and short enough hours, you might find him running a little shop specializing in those sliced and spiced meats he loves to pile on sandwiches.
``I'd call it `International House of Sausage' - do you think those pancake people would get mad?''
Well, maybe, maybe not. Then again, they'd never call their double-stack the Artery Clogger, either. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by CANDICE C. CUSIC, The Virginian-Pilot
Norman Prince, who bought Mike's Colley Deli in 1977 from Mike, is
closing his place today. Too much trouble, too little return, he
says.
by CNB