In the annals of Jewish cooking, matzo balls roll one way or another: light and fluffy, or heavy and leaden. I’m sorry to say that at the new Uptown Deli, they definitely leaned toward the latter. In fact, I came close to using a knife to cut through these babies. (To be fair, this was a carry-out order, so the matzo balls may have been absorbing soup as they sat in the deli case.)
Opened on Saturday, November 6, the long-awaited New York-style delicatessen on 7905 Norfolk Ave. in Bethesda has a fun, promising menu tinged with Yiddish humor (“Ess till you plotz!”). I also tried some whitefish salad and chopped liver, which had good flavor but were both a little too pulverized for me (I like chunky). I’ll hold out final judgment until I sample more, but let’s hope that the matzo balls lighten up and the soup gets less salty. Then bubbe will be proud.
