e bald-headed Jewish deli dynamo is everywhere. On TV. On the

I
magine it's the summer of 1977 and you're driving a
lime-green Plymouth Fury down West Sixth Street.
Hitting a red light at Lamar Boulevard , you stop the
car and sweat against the cracked vinyl seat. Suddenly a
man comes running out of the sales office of the McMorris
Ford auto dealership, once located where GSD&M is today.
He's a salesman wearing cowboy boots and a western shirt.
Waving and grinning, he's headed straight for your car. You
don't know him; you only know this stoplight is taking way
too long.
The salesman taps on your passenger window. You sigh, lean
over and roll it down.
``I can't help it, I gotta tell ya,'' he pants in a New York accent.
``Somebody just came in here looking to buy a green, 5-yearold Plymouth Fury -- just like this one! This is too amazing!
Pull into the lot and we'll talk about it."
And that's how Marc Katz sold more new Pintos than any
other salesman on the lot.
DELI MASCOT
It's not the age that matters, it's the mileage. From his job
at McMorris Ford, Marc Katz didn't cover much physical
distance in 21 years. Just a couple of blocks from the dealership, he established Katz's Deli and, later, Top of the Marc
nightclub. But during that time, Katz shot through three
turbulent marriages. He lost his faith in God, and discovered
it again. He got hooked on drugs and got off them. He found
that through advertising, he could knock on the windows of
almost every car and home in the city. He passed ownership
of the deli to his son, like his father once passed a restaurant
to him.
Pulling his 1966 Cadillac DeVille convertible into the 5-minute zone in front of his restaurant, Katz may look like a carnival gangster in his tinted sunglasses and deli-themed tie, but
he never lets the miles show. Good at selling Pintos, and even
better at selling Reuben sandwiches, Katz has always been
best at selling himself.
``Hello! Hello!'' he says, and enters the deli.
Katz makes his way through the foyer to the dining room,
shaking hands and slapping backs. Watching him here, in his
natural environment, it's impossible not to admire him. Politicians schmoozing with their constituents aren't half as confident; talk show hosts working their audience aren't nearly as
witty. He inhales the attention and exhales showmanship.
His first stop: a birthday party.
``It's my mom's birthday,'' says a restaurant patron. ``Her
name is Margaret."
``Margaret! Can I show you something?'' asks Katz, helping the woman out of her seat. ``It's our special birthday
section."
He takes her to the middle of the room and stops. She
looks confused. Birthday section?
``Can I have everybody's attention! It's Margaret's birthday today, and we're all going to sing! Haaappy Birrrthday
to youuu. .
Second stop: the bar.
A frequent troublemaker in a denim jacket sits alone,
hunched grumpily over his cigarette and coffee.
Katz walks up to the man, taps his shoulder and grabs his
check.
``Excuse me,'' Katz says. ``I'm buying the coffee. Hit the
road and don't ever come back."
Final stop: the kitchen.
``Hola! Como estas? Buenos
dias!'' Katz greets the frantic,
unresponsive cooks. He checks
yesterday's grosses: $14,512 for
the restaurant and $7,500 for Top
of the Marc. That's good, he says.
Business is up 30 percent this
year.
A busboy walks by, and Katz
grabs him.
``Hey, do I know you?'' Katz says roughly, and looks at the
nametag. ``Chris?"
The busboy shakes his head.
``My apologies, I haven't introduced myself yet,'' he says.
``I'm Marc Katz."
REINVENTING THE SPIEL
It's 8 a.m., and an all-too-familiar commercial is on the
radio. Some obnoxious guy is going on about Top of the
Marc and Katz's Deli, his cheese-grater voice scraping
eardrums through alarm clock radios and commuter car
stereos. As the pitchman approaches the end of the script,
he ratchets up the screech factor for the punchline you
know by heart.
``I can't help it! I gotta tell ya! Katz's never closes!!"
And you wonder: ``How does he get away with it?'' How
does a deli owner, of all people, get away with passing
himself off as an A-list celebrity? Get away with parading
around in his Caddy like a king?
There are two answers.
First, Katz is a gifted huckster. When not purchasing airtime for his ventures, Katz tempts the press into doing his
dirty work for him. Like the time he took a bagel on his
vacation to the Antarctic just so he could hype it as ``the
first bagel ever to reach the South Pole.'' Or when he hired
a uniformed security guard to feed parking meters outside
his restaurant, vowing to fight the city if they dared ticket
his customers.
With the press at his disposal and the airwaves saturated,
he turns his attention to community relations. Ten percent of sales from one dining room table goes to benefit
causes, a program that's been adopted by many restaurants nationwide. Katz's Deli was the No. 1 independent
fund-raiser for AIDS Services of Austin last year.
``We're really lucky to have him,'' says Kirk Rice, development director at AIDS Services . ``He raised more than
$30,000, and this year he's helping Project Transitions.
He doesn't pick just one beneficiary; he keeps changing
organizations and spreading the wealth."
In a PBS special on innovative small businesses, Katz
explained he simply uses the
same charitable policies as
Merrill Lynch and Coca-Cola.
Anybody can serve good food,
Katz figures, but if you can gain
regard among the community
and make customers feel generous by dining at your restaurant
. . . well, that's a whole other knish.
The second reason Katz can play culinary rock star is
because he's sincere. You can tell Katz genuinely believes
in what he is selling, whether it's his matzo ball soup, W.C.
Clark's blues set at Top of the Marc or his own significance. The overwhelming sincerity turns his pomposity
and narcissism into positive personality traits. You like
Marc Katz for the same reasons you dislike others. ``I'm
the most recognized local personality in Austin, and I love
it,'' Katz says. ``There's nothing wrong with going into
a 7-Eleven and the counter guy says, `How are you, Mr.
Katz?' There's a lot of ego gratification, but it's a luxury I
can afford."
That he can. In the 19 years since he opened the deli, Katz
added the upscale nightclub Top of the Marc (in 1989),
started his own Bagel Label record label last year and
somewhere along the line became a local institution.
Is all this what the New York native wanted to achieve in
Austin? No. Katz came to Austin to escape the restaurant
business.
The bald-headed Jewish deli
dynamo is everywhere. On
TV. On the radio. In your
face. And always, always,
never klosing.
MAKING HIS MARC
``My dad,’’ Katz says slowly. ``My dad . . . was the greatest
influence on my life. My dad was the greatest restaurateur
I ever knew. My dad is my idol. My dad’s presence is still in
this restaurant. My dad wasn’t alive when this restaurant was
built, but this restaurant was built on memories of what my
dad taught me to do. My dad is . . . is amazing. And I have
achieved beyond what he left me, and that’s what he wanted.”
Katz’s father, Ben, owned the Meyer’s deli in Queens. Ben had
learned how to be a kosher butcher from Isaac Katz, his Polish
immigrant father.
``Dad didn’t use marketing,’’ says Katz, ``or even
know the concept of the
word. But people just loved
him. He’d give money to all
the dog pounds and people
in the street. I don’t think it
came back to him in dollars
and cents, but it came back
to him somewhere along
the line.”
When he was 16, Marc
showed up for his first day
on the job wearing a tie.
``My Dad said, `Great tie,
it’s going to get stuffed in
the disposal.’ He started me
in the back room, and I was
stuck there for years and
years.”
Marc Katz and his wife
Katz left for the University
of Oklahoma, then returned to
work at Meyer’s full time until his father died in 1977. Soon
after, Katz sold Meyer’s and moved to Austin with his two children and his native Texan wife, Tillie.
``When he first came in, he said he was tired of the hassle in
New York,’’ drawls Jim Wood, general manager of McMorris
Ford. ``He was a good salesman; he was real good.’’
Katz sold enough Pintos, Grenadas and T-Birds at the dealership to regularly win ``Employee of the Month.’’ For lunch, he
often walked to a restaurant at 618 W. Sixth St. The diner was
first called Caruso’s. Then the Sixth Street Trolley. Then the
San Francisco Bay Club.
``By the third restaurant, the space had the kiss of death to it,’’
Katz says. ``Nobody wanted to touch it. But I frequented the
place; I knew the problem. There were things going on upstairs, where Top of the Marc is now, that people would go to
jail for. There was a whorehouse, a poker game, photography .
. . all sorts of stuff. But me, I was enamored with the property.
Being from New York, just the idea of having a restaurant with
a parking lot had me beside myself.”
He had once wanted to get away from the restaurant business,
sure, but when he relocated to Austin he experienced a ``tremendously positive culture shock.’’ He realized it wasn’t running a restaurant that he disliked, but running a restaurant in
New York City. Reinventing his father’s deli in Austin seemed
like a terrific idea.
His friends, loan officers and former co-workers all agreed:
Katz was nuts.
``There wasn’t anything going on downtown, and he was
gonna open a Jewish-style restaurant,’’ Wood says. ``I told
him, `People in Texas
eat chicken fried steak.
What’s wrong with you,
boy?’ ‘’
With his partner, Abe
Zimmerman, Katz raised
$100,000 and bought the
West Sixth Street building. His partner wanted
to call the deli ``Zimmerman’s,’’ but Katz
argued the neon sign for
such a long name would
be too expensive. Purely
for financial reasons, of
course, it would be wiser
to go with a shorter
name. Something like
``Katz’s.”
Katz also brought his
dad’s former chef, Juan
joyfully laughing together. ``Jimmy’’ Garcia, to
Austin as his head chef.
He quickly decided to promote the restaurant as a Jewish-style
New York deli.
``I was advised not to play up the Jew, not to play up the
Yankee,’’ Katz says. ``Granted, by putting those characteristics
out there we alienated a certain amount of the population. But
I did it anyway because I thought the restaurant needed that
identity to stand alone. And I’m proud of both.”
The hours were 11 a.m. to 4 a.m., but it was late at night, after
the bars closed, that Katz earned most of his business -- and
headaches.
``It was showdown at the O.K. Corral every night,’’ says Katz.
``The drinking age was 18 back then, and the students were
coming out of the bars and were wild. I would get the UT football players on my side, and I also had to hire a bouncer.”
One frequent late-night patron was club owner Clifford Antone, who in the early ‘80s lived a block from the restaurant.
The two Austin entrepreneurs formed a symbiotic relationship: Katz fed Antone’s mouth, Antone fed Katz’s ears.
``Katz used to come to my nightclub in that white limo of
his,’’ Antone says. ``And I’d go to his restaurant with all
the entertainers. For us music and nightclub people, the
late night is an important time. I’ve been all over and I’ve
never seen a place after 2 a.m. like Katz’s. It might be the
best 24-hour menu there is.”
KATZ & SON
Katz didn’t ascend from car salesman to entrepreneurial
business celebrity without being a bit of a bastard. More
than a bit, some people would say. People like his ex-tenants. Katz purchased offices neighboring his deli and confiscated the parking spaces for his restaurant customers.
And people like his ex-employees. Former Katz’s Deli
workers tell stories of abusive treatment and unsanitary
kitchen conditions, saying if they threw away food at
Katz’s (even if the item fell on the floor, was previously
served or spoiled) they would be fired. Austin/Travis
County health department inspection reports for Katz’s
Deli show the restaurant hasn’t failed in the past six years
on record, but it has been cited repeatedly for failing to
keep food at safe temperatures.
Mark Parsons, a sanitarian at the health department,
confirms receiving complaints from Katz’s customers who
were suspicious of food being recycled. ``People getting
served bread with teeth marks already in them, that sort
of thing,’’ Parsons says.
While Katz admits he didn’t win any popularity contests
from his tenants or employees (``I was a different person
in the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s, no question.’’), he strongly
disputes accusations of unsafe food handling.
``My kitchen is immaculate,’’ he says. ``It’s cleaner now
than it used to be, and it’s not as clean as it will be a year
from now, but we do not violate hygiene laws. Don’t listen
to these sour grapes. We’ve had promotions where customers ate dinner in our kitchen.”
Strictly speaking, Katz no longer runs the restaurant;
he’s the figurehead. Two years ago, the 51-year-old Katz
passed ownership of the deli to his 26-year-old son, Barry.
He says his television commercial where he hands Barry a
key to Katz’s Deli is his favorite (Katz also has a daughter,
Andrea Kampine, a consultant who lives in Washington,
D.C.).
Barry came to work at Katz’s Deli in 1993 after his father
left Austin to undergo drug rehabilitation.
``He always wanted to be a chef,’’ Katz says. ``But he
didn’t want to work with me.”
Sitting side-by-side at a table in their restaurant, Katz
and his son are a psychologist’s dream. Both sit with their
hands neatly folded, wearing glasses and matching bar
mitzvah rings. Nearly everything else about them clashes. One is stout, the other is lean. Marc drives the classic
American Caddy, Barry a Japanese sports car. Marc has
gold caps that shine when he laughs and wears monogrammed shirts, while Barry shuns such self-promoting
flashiness.