Jake Dell

The Climb

Business training is the backdrop here. Tufts University (2009) and NYU Stern School of Business gave Jake Dell a working language for systems, numbers, and continuity; those are the tools that sit under the more immediate demands of deli operations. Since 2009, Dell has been owner of Katz's Delicatessen, where the job is less about changing the place than maintaining a New York institution that already carries its own weight. In a city where restaurant careers often get measured by novelty, Dell's work has been built around stewardship. The craft is the upkeep of a room that already means something: holding to process, keeping standards in place, and managing a business whose identity depends on continuity as much as commerce.

Today

Manual systems remain central at Katz's Delicatessen under Dell's approach. Rather than pushing the operation toward a more automated model, he keeps the place working in a way that preserves its rhythm, with attention and repetition doing the same job that machinery often does elsewhere. That choice protects the deli's character and keeps the work legible to the people doing it. Dell has described the standard plainly: “I always want it to be perfect.” At Katz's, that reads as a production requirement, not a slogan. It applies to the meat customers associate with the New York City address, to the pace of service, and to the exactness that the counter demands. The bar is consistency, held day after day. Pastrami carries the most weight in the deli's identity, and Dell's role is framed around maintaining that specialty rather than reframing it. The work sits in repetition, habit, and product control, with tradition measured through sameness and care. At a place where his own childhood events unfolded, the present-day operation remains tied to a manual system, a protected tradition, and a standard that is treated as non-negotiable.

Signature

Jake's signature dishes include Pastrami on Rye.

In Their Words “I always want it to be perfect.”

Recognition

The recognition attached to Dell is straightforward: his name is now linked with Katz's Delicatessen and the pastrami that defines it. That association is earned through fidelity to the existing form of the place, not through reinvention. The value is in keeping the expected thing intact. His focus on pastrami and corned beef sharpens that association into a craft standard. It points to preservation over novelty, with manual systems largely maintained and the core meats held to the same measure of exactness that shapes the rest of the operation.