FANS OF award-winning TV series The Bear should look no further than Shapiro’s Delicatessen to find its Indianapolis equivalent. Both are family-run and boast popular sandwiches—Shapiro’s is known for its pastrami, while its fictional counterpart has lines for its Italian beef. Each is a staple of a booming Midwestern city’s food scene, attracting daily regulars and the occasional celebrity. Each even had a family member trained in the culinary arts return to transform the restaurant.
But though the stresses of running a restaurant were a source of conflict for the fictional Berzattos, the Shapiros say the ebb and flow of their business helped keep them together. Since opening its doors in 1905, Shapiro’s has survived antisemitism, changes to its neighborhood, aborted franchise attempts, and the pandemic. The family’s willingness to roll with the changes helps.
“Jewish food can be comfort food,” fourth-generation owner Brian Shapiro says. “But we also have to adjust to evolving food trends and what people eat and how they shop.” There’s a balance between progress and respecting the past. Lean too far from tradition, and you risk losing your regulars. But if you refuse to evolve, new diners might stay away in droves.
Chopped liver, that occasionally maligned staple, is a great symbol of how the Shapiros have approached that balance. It’s been part of the family’s story all the way back to the late 18th century, when their ancestors owned a food market in Odessa, Ukraine. Back then, the region was part of Tsarist Russia, and according to family lore, the Shapiros eventually became the head food purveyor for the empire’s army, making easy-to-carry staples for the troops.
An uptick in antisemitic persecution forced a mass migration of Jewish people from Russiaat the turn of the century, the Shapiros among them. The deli’s founders landed in Indianapolis in 1905.
“My family came to Indy because they had family there. In the late 1800s, if you immigrated to the U.S., you had to have a sponsor, and ours was in Indy. My ancestors wanted to go to the heartland—because Ukraine was the heartland [where they came from], where they grew the food,” Brian says.
His great-grandfather Louis and great-grandmother Rebecca started selling flour and sugar from a pushcart. After two years of scrimping and saving, they opened a deli in a working-class neighborhood south of downtown.
By 1940, the deli had added a cafeteria-style restaurant, and Louis’ son Abe honed his chef skills in New York before returning home to help his parents and siblings at the business. He ran the kitchen while the others operated the takeout counter, greeted guests, or worked behind the scenes. Know-how Abe brought back from the coast allowed the establishment to expand again, this time with a bakery where their now-signature rye bread is made to this day.
Also popular was that iconic chopped liver. “We used to sell 20 pounds of chopped liver a day,” Shapiro says. These days, they’re lucky to sell 8 pounds of it in a day, but it will remain on the menu for good, Shapiro says. There’s no way he’ll disappoint the dish’s diehard fans.
Those loyal patrons are likely why Shapiro’s was able to stay afloat during the pandemic, when others foundered. “Fortunately, a third of our sales were takeout, so we were already set up for that,” Shapiro says. At the height of the pandemic, he divided staff into two teams and hired an independent lab for regular tests. If someone got sick on one team, the other team was ready to step in.
Photos by Tony Valainis / Indianapolis Monthly
But the pandemic wasn’t the first globally divisive issue Shapiro’s has faced. When the same hate-mongering that drove the Shapiros from Russia reared its head in Indiana, Louis Shapiro was ready. In 1924, Ku Klux Klan member Ed Jackson rode on a wave of bigotry to his election as state governor. After years of enduring quiet antisemitism, Indiana Jews found themselves under increased harassment from KKK-associated law enforcement and politicians such as Jackson.
“Prohibition on the surface has nothing to do with Jews,” says Michael Brown, executive director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society. “But it was definitely used to attack Jews. In fact, rabbis were arrested in Indy because they just had too much sacrificial wine for Passover.” Louis resisted those antisemitic threats, redecorating his landmark storefront to defiantly read, “Shapiro’s Kosher Foods,” and painting a huge Star of David on its facade.
Almost a century later, Brian Shapiro is grappling with some of the same issues. Since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens, he’s seen an uptick of what he believes to be bots attacking the deli on social media. “I just look at their posts and go, ‘I’m glad that you have this much free time,’” he says.
Brian doesn’t have much time to mess with social media, given the demands of the deli. And in the restaurant’s dining room, as always, the customers come from a broad mix of cultures and backgrounds. With the development boom on the near south side, its audience is getting bigger, younger, and more diverse.
“My youngest daughter does [artificial intelligence] for Nvidia,” Shapiro says. “She reminds me, ‘Dad, don’t make Shapiro’s too uniform and automated.’” So, though Shapiro dreams of a day when the restaurant might completely revamp its 1870-built structure, its centuries of tradition won’t change.
“If we ever did, we’d lose our connection to people,” Shapiro says firmly. “The fun part of being in the restaurant business is seeing people. There’ll be someone in line that I haven’t seen for years, and I happen to be working that day, and I see them by chance and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ It never gets old.”
