My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe

Apr 05, 2013 Matthew rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: korea, non-fiction

My Korean Deli is a self-absorbed, egotistical piece of literary sh*t. This carelessly thrown together selective memoir is not at all deserving of the attention it garnered over a year ago. Howe's condescending narrative almost makes you want the business to fail (view spoiler). The author comes across as a whiny, over-privileged, uninspired yuppie "slaving" away at a cushy magazine editing job while moonlighting as an incompetent convenienc...more

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May 28, 2013 Gail Goetschius rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My Korean Deli is the memoir of a WASP editor and his Korean wife who buy a deli in order to make enough money to gain independence from his wife's parents and then give the deli to his wife's mother. Living with his in laws and their extended family and owning and running a deli are about as far from Howe's comfort zone as he can get, yet his acceptance of the situations, his hard work, and his obvious love for his wife make him very likable narrator. I think I preferred the chapters about Howe...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This warm and funny tale of an earnest preppy editor finding himself trapped behind the counter of a Brooklyn convenience store is about family, culture and identity in an age of discombobulation.

It starts with a gift, when Ben Ryder Howe's wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents' self-sacrifice by buying them a store. Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along. Things soon become a lot more complicated. After the business struggles, Howe f

...more

This warm and funny tale of an earnest preppy editor finding himself trapped behind the counter of a Brooklyn convenience store is about family, culture and identity in an age of discombobulation.

It starts with a gift, when Ben Ryder Howe's wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents' self-sacrifice by buying them a store. Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along. Things soon become a lot more complicated. After the business struggles, Howe finds himself living in the basement of his in-laws' Staten Island home, commuting to the Paris Review offices in George Plimpton's Upper East Side townhouse by day, and heading to Brooklyn at night to slice cold cuts and peddle lottery tickets. My Korean Deli follows the store's tumultuous life span, and along the way paints the portrait of an extremely unlikely partnership between characters with shoots across society, from the Brooklyn streets to Seoul to Puritan New England. Owning the deli becomes a transformative experience for everyone involved as they struggle to salvage the original gift—and the family—while sorting out issues of values, work, and identity.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2011: In this laugh-out-loud funny memoir, Ben Ryder Howe, a burned out editor at the Paris Review, spends his days concealing his apathy from his eccentric boss (George Plimpton!), avoiding the short story slush pile, and anticipating the day he will move out of his in-laws’ Staten Island basement. When Ben’s wife insists they buy a deli for her mother, he is skeptical but somehow energized by the risk involved, envisioning himself behind the counter at a profitable little deli providing bohemian customers with gourmet groceries. Instead, he ricochets from the magazine by day to the struggling deli by night, where his regular customers drink beer in the aisles, his mother-in-law, the “Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers,” squares off with Mr. Tortilla Chip, and his pistol-packing employee, Dwayne, conducts X-rated phone calls with his girlfriends while ringing up customers. Howe’s daily interactions with a unique cross-section of humanity and his self-deprecating humor infuse My Korean Deli with insight, hopefulness, and addictive entertainment.--Seira Wilson

From Publishers Weekly

Former senior editor of the Paris Review, Howe recounts his stint as owner and beleaguered worker of a Brooklyn deli in this touching memoir. Howe and his wife, Gab, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decide to buy a deli for her parents as a gesture of goodwill for the sacrifices they have made. His mother-in-law, Kay, whom he describes as the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers, is gung-ho from the start, and when a store is finally purchased in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, she immediately takes charge. The work (including manipulating the devilish lottery machine) is more trying than Howe anticipated, not to mention dealing with the eccentric neighborhood characters who complain bitterly about any changes, from coffee prices to shelf rearrangements. Mostly working the night shift, Howe also maintains his position at the magazine. Both establishments are sinking ships: the deli hemorrhages money as bills pile up and revenue falters; the Review grows more disorganized, and subscribership plummets. Howe ably transforms what could have been a string of amusing vignettes about deli ownership into a humorous but heartfelt look into the complexities of family dynamics and the search for identity. (Mar.)
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Apr 06, 2011 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: may-june-2011

Howe certainly left his comfort zone when he and his wife decided to open a deli in Brooklyn. Not only did they leave solid, white-collar jobs for an uncertain venture; they embraced socioeconomic differences with open eyes. “Very seldom,” noted the New York Times Book Review, “does [Howe] let his ‘snob siren’ go off or point out the disparity between the regulars who ‘lend the store an atmosphere similar to that of an off-track betting parlor’ and the people at The Paris Review.” But rather tha...more

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May 15, 2013 Kasa Cotugno rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, genre-biography-memoir, location-usa-new-york, location-asia-korea

This is a pleasant memoir, more of an extended blog, with situations beyond its original premise. When finished, I was surprised at the harshness of some of the other reviews since I didn't find it any more self-absorbed than any other memoir, and with its elements of cross cultural influence more compelling than most. Howe moves into his in-laws home in Staten Island so that he and his wife can help her first generation Korean family gain independence in a business of their own, a convenience s...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Julie Wilding rated it 3 of 5 stars

"'Ready for work, boss!' she announces with crushing enthusiasm every time she sees me. (This might be the only English she knows.) We position her next to the register and forbid her to go anywhere else, lest a roll of toilet paper fall off the shelf and break one of her collarbones. For a few days we watch as revenue inexplicably plummets during her shifts, until we realize she's handing out change like a broken slot machine..."

"After a few weeks at the register, my hands have returned to bein...more "'Ready for work, boss!' she announces with crushing enthusiasm every time she sees me. (This might be the only English she knows.) We position her next to the register and forbid her to go anywhere else, lest a roll of toilet paper fall off the shelf and break one of her collarbones. For a few days we watch as revenue inexplicably plummets during her shifts, until we realize she's handing out change like a broken slot machine..."

"After a few weeks at the register, my hands have returned to being the reasonably obedient appendages they used to be...I'm never going to be able to keep them clean, and when someone reaches deep inside their pocket for some cash, as if they were rearranging furniture inside their groin, then hands me a bill so damp it might as well have been underwater, I no longer flinch. Money is money."

"The typical lottery customer is apparently someone who woke up and almost got run over by a bus outside their apartment building, then memorized the bus's license plate number and realized that it had four digits in common with their mother's birthday, which prompted them to visit their mother's old neighborhood and play the lottery at the local store using a combination of (1) the number 9, representing the floor of the apartment building where she used to live, (2) the number 6 and 3, 63 being the year in which John F. Kennedy died, and (3) the number 2, because that was the TV station that featured the mother's favorite show, Judge Judy, which she passed away while watching. This simple, heartfelt tribute--a sentimental and not at all profligate gesture--would be followed by sixteen more tickets involving every permutation of 9, 2, and 63 imaginable..."

"America's grownups don't rush; they throw their arms around the world and try to make it stand still."

"The slush is an affirmation that great literature isn't about anything--not the writing program you attended, not how blessed you are in the cheekbone department, not who your friends are--but words themselves."(less)

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Jul 13, 2012 Franc added it

Shelves: didn-t-won-t-finish

I've only made it to page 30, I don't think that I will finish. Full disclosure - I am half-Korean and my mother used to own a carry-out with a steam table; just puttin' it all out there. Given that - i agree that an American, his Korean wife, and MIL opening a deli in NY to assuage some guilt she has about her Mother's sacrifices, could be a hilarious or at least, interesting story.

Just a few chapters in and I'm kinda offended. Even the stereotypical deli-owning Korean family, I was going along...more

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May 09, 2012 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this to be a real page-turner of a memoir about a guy who opens a Korean deli in Brooklyn, together with his Korean-American wife and Korean mother-in-law. He goes into a lot of explanation about Korean-American culture, and the culture of many other immigrants in NYC and how they make their living in various ways, often with really creative ways of gaming the system.

I got to live vicariously through someone brave enough to open a small business, since I am way too chicken to ever do it...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Joshua rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

My Korean Deli started off with a loud bang as Ben Ryder Howe chronicles how he and his Korean-American wife take all their savings [30K], sign-up for a bunch of credit cards [is this a wise way to help finance a business start-up?] and buy a tiny, revenue challenged deli in Brooklyn with his mother-in-law. Howe happens to have a day job as an editor at the Paris Review literary magazine. By opening the deli, he will now have a night job too as he mans the 4-1am shift four nights a week. As the...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Chris Aylott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ben Ryder Howe's memoir of helping buy and run a Korean deli reads like it should be a movie (and apparently it was, at least for a while, though the project seems to have gone dormant). A WASPy editor working for George Plimpton, Howe is married to a daughter of Korean immigrants who has decided to help her mother own a deli of her own. While Howe's mother-in-law is a lifelong retail expert, Howe and his wife are not, and they're quickly in over their heads.

Howe's struggles with the deli brings...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Mary rated it 3 of 5 stars

True story of a snobby, uptight former writer for the Paris Review who buys and helps run a deli in Brooklyn, NY, with his Korean wife and her family (yes, the title is a bit of misnomer, it's a "regular" deli but run primarily by Koreans). While I found reading about the every day struggles of buying and running a small "mom & pop" deli really interesting, and some of the characters (like Kay, his mother-in-law, and Dwayne, one of their employees) really intriguing, I found the navel-gazing...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Nancy Kennedy rated it 5 of 5 stars

You know how when you walk the streets of New York, you keep your eyes straight ahead? You don't look left or right, and you certainly don't slow down to peer into some little shop in a skeevy neighborhood, let alone go in.

Well, you don't have to go in. Ben Ryder Howe has gone into the store for you. In fact, he and his wife, Gab, bought the store. His wife quit her job as a corporate attorney to buy a deli in Brooklyn for her Korean mother, Kay ("the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers"), in a tr...more You know how when you walk the streets of New York, you keep your eyes straight ahead? You don't look left or right, and you certainly don't slow down to peer into some little shop in a skeevy neighborhood, let alone go in.

Well, you don't have to go in. Ben Ryder Howe has gone into the store for you. In fact, he and his wife, Gab, bought the store. His wife quit her job as a corporate attorney to buy a deli in Brooklyn for her Korean mother, Kay ("the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers"), in a traditional gesture of gratitude.

The move is cultural whiplash for Mr. Howe, a senior editor at the venerable Paris Review who is descended from a long line of WASPy Boston Brahmins. He's no less stunned by the move to his in-laws' Staten Island home, where the couple move to save up money for the store. There, they live in the basement, where relatives come and go, rendering privacy an unknown entity, and the pungent smells of Korean cooking permeate the air.

Mr. Howe introduces readers to the hilarious cast of characters that parade in and out of their tiny convenience store. Who knew that regulars hang out drinking beer and watching TV until the wee hours at a deli? The most arresting portrait is that of Dwayne, the shop's long-time and loyal employee who insists sandwiches must include over a third of a pound of meat. "Dwayne has groupies, devotees and disciples, people from all over Brooklyn and every demographic in the neighborhood who come to see him," Mr. Howe says. They call him "Preach," but he packs heat.

No less fascinating is the inside look Mr. Howe gives of the hothouse literary atmosphere of the Paris Review under the editorship of the legendary George Plimpton, the scion of "participatory journalism." Editors drift in and out of the offices in the basement of George's Upper East Side apartment, parties break out, George pronounces. You'll laugh out loud at the depiction of the dreaded "slush pile," those thousands of unsolicited manuscripts that pour into any literary establishment. Here it's actually revered for its possibilities of harboring the next literary genius.

This is an edgier tale of the naife in the real world than Michael Gill's How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. You'll enjoy Mr. Howe's tale of small business ownership and his struggle to survive despite police stings, spiraling debts, crime, punishing citations and the perils of trying to do something about his wretched coffee. Not least because readers can enjoy it all at a distance! (less)

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Jan 26, 2012 Unwisely rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, memoir, non-fiction

I picked this up on a whim while roaming through the library; I guess I liked the cover fonts, and it had a pull quote from The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible dude. Out of the seven books I brought back from that library trip, this is the one I picked up first.

First off, the dude is sort of a rich douche. I mean, he's appropriately introspective, but his world is so far removed from anything I'm familiar with it's a bit unreal. (Al...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Nick added it

I really enjoyed this one. It falls squarely within the currently “hot genre” of twenty-thirtysomething memoir. Despite my best attempts, I was comparing myself to the protagonist and his wife the whole time, comparing our jobs, marriages, experiences of New York City. I even knew the location of the eponymous deli, but I think I bypassed it the one time I was in the neighborhood and was deciding on where to get a deli sandwich.
Maybe these youthful memoirs are so popular because we live in insec...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A memoir about cross-cultural conflict, with Howe sitting in the middle of it. Howe is a Blueblood Boston Brahmin who marries into a Korean immigrant family. He also works for George Plimpton as an editor for The Paris Review, which takes writing seriously, but not publishing. And he now owns a Korean deli in a newly gentrifying part of Brooklyn, with all the work and weird people that owning and running a neighborhood deli entails.

The book's at least partly an ode to New York and what it means...more

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Sep 16, 2011 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

Paris Review editor Ben Howe, descended from the earliest Bostonians, and his wife Gab, an attorney whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Korea, decide to use the money they’ve been saving to buy a house to make her mother’s dream come true. The dream happens to be becoming proprietor of a convenience store/deli in Brooklyn, and Ben and Gab have saved this money by living in her parents’ basement along with a rotating cast of other family members. Ben continues to work half-heartedly for his...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

On the surface My Korean Deli is about the experience Ben Howe has owning a deli in New York with his wife and her Korean parents, but its really about so much more! In his funny, self - effacing way he talks about the issues his in-laws faced as immigrants, what it was like for his wife to grow up with immigrant parents, and how that shaped what they wanted the store to become. While trying to make a go of the deli (no easy task) Ben works at the Paris Review for George Plimpton, so sprinkled t...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Kim Sheehan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could...I liked much of it, but there was a lot I could skip over.

This is a non-fiction story of how the author, his wife, and her Korean family purchased and ran a Korean deli in Brooklyn for several years. At the same time, the author is struggling with a less-than-inspiring job at the Paris Review and his wife is trying to find an appropriate work/life balance...all while living in the Pak family basement. There's really about four different stories in this book,...more

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Jul 18, 2011 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: challenge, happiness, moving-and-starting-over

My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe

There are books I read that make me wish I were as good at reviewing books as I am at reading them. This book is one of these.

Howe is the WASP-iest of WASPs, with Pilgrim ancestors who came over on the first boats, and an A+ education. He's an editor at the Paris Review which, to the five of us who continue to salute the written word, is up there with the Supreme Ruler of the Western World. He's married to a woman who is a new immigrant, with that killer drive wh...more

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Jul 08, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, nonfiction, memoir

What’s not obvious from the title of this book is that Howe was, at the time in which this book is set, a senior editor at The Paris Review. And thus while the memoir is ostensibly about the author, his Korean wife and mother-in-law buying and running a Brooklyn deli, there’s a subplot about the final years of the Review under its venerable editor, George Plimpton.

Howe manages to weave his life at the Review, the trials of running a small business in New York, and, perhaps most compellingly, the...more What’s not obvious from the title of this book is that Howe was, at the time in which this book is set, a senior editor at The Paris Review. And thus while the memoir is ostensibly about the author, his Korean wife and mother-in-law buying and running a Brooklyn deli, there’s a subplot about the final years of the Review under its venerable editor, George Plimpton.

Howe manages to weave his life at the Review, the trials of running a small business in New York, and, perhaps most compellingly, the tangle of emotion and obligation in his wife’s family’s life vs. his extremely Puritan New England upbringing. He’s a descendant of those who came over on the Mayflower (and his family never left Plymouth, MA) and as the book progresses he finds himself learning to understand and support his immigrant mother-in-law, and to give in to his wife’s sense of family duty. It’s an interesting perspective, and as a reader you can sense the anxiety it caused him. George Plimpton and the struggling Paris Review are another source of anxiety and stress, and yet Howe has written a humorous, loving memoir that displays both his discomfort with and respect for the ways Plimpton and his mother-in-law do things.

The descriptions of the inner workings of The Paris Review are intriguing, sometimes funny. (They would, I suspect, be funnier if I wasn’t submitting my own work to lit magazines.) For example:

"One of the quintessential Paris Review experiences is opening a cupboard to look for a coffee mug and having an avalanche of short fiction land on top of you. You open a closet meant for coats and there’s a stack of cardboard boxes containing unsolicited manuscripts. You sit down at your desk and stretch out your legs, and bump—there’s a whole milk crate of human creativity. There’s slush on the shelves in piles reaching up to the ceiling, slush in the basement in ice coolers and picnic baskets, slush under the toilet, slush over the sink … There’s so much slush it makes you wonder if everyone in the country, instead of watching reality TV and playing video games, is writing short stories."

The magazine lacked any employees handling the business aspects — marketing and permissions, for example, which led to mistakes by and complications for its editors, including Howe. And Plimpton’s failing health presents challenges that no one at the magazine is prepared to handle. Meanwhile Howe and his wife are living with his in-laws on Staten Island, working night shifts at the financially teetering deli and watching his mother-in-law work harder than he ever imagined possible. He must learn about her past and understand why she is the way she is. She’s a force in the book, a character that Howe presents perhaps more completely than he does his wife, a corporate attorney who works shifts in the deli after a long day in her Manhattan office. The family learns to manage employees, how to handle deliverymen who try to extort them, and they battle undercover officers trying to catch them in the act of selling cigarettes to minors. Of course, as in any convenience store, there’s also the added concerns about crime, small margins, and difficult customers. You can’t help but want to know how it turns out.(less)

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Apr 21, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

As someone who married a man who owned two fast food restaurants, I really related to Ben Howe's story. He perfectly captures the craziness, the back-breaking work, insanely long hours, the horrible bureaucratic obstacles and yes, the occasional rewards of owning your own small business in America.

Howe tries to balance his work as an editor at the Paris Review, and the contrast between that world of the Upper East Side in NYC and the Brooklyn neighborhood where the Korean deli is located perfect...more As someone who married a man who owned two fast food restaurants, I really related to Ben Howe's story. He perfectly captures the craziness, the back-breaking work, insanely long hours, the horrible bureaucratic obstacles and yes, the occasional rewards of owning your own small business in America.

Howe tries to balance his work as an editor at the Paris Review, and the contrast between that world of the Upper East Side in NYC and the Brooklyn neighborhood where the Korean deli is located perfectly mirrors the patchwork of life in New York. His vivid portrait of his boss, George Plimpton, is so intriguing. What I know of Plimpton has mostly come from his reports of his own adventures (Paper Lion, etc.), so this look at him from Howe's point of view is fascinating.

Then there is Howe's Korean mother-in-law, Kay. Howe's wife Gab wanted to buy a deli for her mother to thank her for the sacrifices she made to educate Gab, sending her to college and law school. While WASPy Howe doesn't quite get this, he supports his wife, and they extend their living in his in-law's basement to buy the deli for Kay. Kay and Ben clash immediately while trying to find a deli to buy, and when they do buy one, Ben is way too slow to pick up the nuances of working the cash register. He is relegated to stocking shelves.

The deli is a meeting place for various characters in the neighborhood, some who hang around all day and night. Howe usually worked the late shift, so his customers were the creatures of the night. He grew to tolerate, and respect, these people, even while they exasperated him. One employee, an African-American man named Dwayne, came with the store, and while he was a good employee, always showing up for work, he frequently offended customers of the store with his language. In a book filled with colorful, interesting people, Dwayne is perhaps the most interesting. He knows everyone and everything about the neighborhood, and is a single dad trying to raise his daughters.

Immigrants are the backbone of this nation, and Howe tells Kay and her husband's story with honesty and respect. Where they came from, how hard they worked to get to America and make something of themselves, it is a tribute to the people who work long, hard hours, doing work that many people refuse to do, that explain how many cultures come here and make a success of themselves for their families.

Howe nails the difficulties of owning your own small business- the strain it puts on a marriage, the constant money worries- it's a 24/7 responsibility, much like having a child, which Ben and Gab are also struggling to do. His tales of the deli, what it means to the neighborhood, to his family, and eventually to him, give the reader a real appreciation of small business owners. I loved his story of Gab trying to get from Queens to Brooklyn during a horrible snowstorm, and of keeping the store open during the big blackout.

Howe is a gifted writer, and this book is one I would highly recommend. It's a great American story.
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Apr 07, 2011 Terryn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was downright shocked by how much I enjoyed reading “My Korean Deli.” I read the book in a day, it was so good. It’s a memoir written about how Ben (Waspy Bostonian white boy), his wife Gab (first generation Korean), and his mother-in-law (Korean immigrant) decide to open a Korean deli in the middle of a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Ben works nights at the deli, and days at the Paris Review, a hoity toity literary magazine. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong, but Howe does an...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Paula Gallagher rated it 3 of 5 stars

A light, popcorn read. Howe breezily walks us through the trials of an enterprise foisted on him by his Korean wife Gab and her mother Kay. Never fully invested (psychically, physically) in the scheme to open a Korean deli in New York City and reap the profits, Howe is able to keep some cool remove in his storytelling. He's an editor working for George Plimpton at The Paris Review who is mystified by the workings of the cash register, his clientele's fondness for really bad 65-cent coffee, and t...more

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Jun 18, 2011 John Paul Capili rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction

I don't read a lot of memoirs, but this one caught my attention. It's not entirely about running a deli store, it's about the author's adventure or attempt at self-discovery. He talks a lot about his struggle to understand his Korean mother-in-law, his loosening of that puritan uptightness, and getting the confidence to take on unfamiliar situations.

Stories about his goofy but formidable boss and his pistol-packing employee bring out the fun and deep emotions from the book.

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Mar 13, 2013 Twilight rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: korean, customer-service, new-york

A mixed bag from an author's first foray in writing books. The author looks at his time in a Korean deli, purchased for his mother in law. The book takes place over a period of years, looking at the day to day issues of running a store, the more interesting activities that happen and the customers that pass through. Not ever spending much time in NY, this was rather fascinating.

However, the book is rather uneven, talking about the deli as well as the lives of some of the people in it as well as...more A mixed bag from an author's first foray in writing books. The author looks at his time in a Korean deli, purchased for his mother in law. The book takes place over a period of years, looking at the day to day issues of running a store, the more interesting activities that happen and the customers that pass through. Not ever spending much time in NY, this was rather fascinating.

However, the book is rather uneven, talking about the deli as well as the lives of some of the people in it as well as the author's personal life and other job. Sometimes it flowed really well and was very interesting to read, and sometimes I found myself skipping over passages, because I did not buy this book to read about the author's job at the magazine, but rather what he does at the deli.

There does seem to be good social commentary as well. The author discusses how hard it can be to keep customers happy when they've been used to seeing the same prices and same employees (and will flip if they fire such employee...). That NY can make it VERY difficult to run a business with fees, enforcement and stings that sometimes are for legal purposes, and some that just seem totally wacky. The various type of people, from employees to customers will probably bring a smile or shudder of horror to anyone who has ever done customer service in retail, and the author points out it is something everyone should do.

The book mostly fails when it tries to describe the life of a few people and their relationships to the author. One I grew to care less and less about and the other it was difficult to care as the book went on. I felt there was some attempt to parallel the author's time at the store and his other job to the times of these people, but it didn't quite tie in. Really, while the book initially started off very well, at times the book feels very much like a mishmash of stories that don't quite tie well enough together.

Probably an interest if you have a daily deli you go to, live in NY or have experience with immigrant families and their stores.(less)

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Dec 21, 2012 Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

My Korean Deli is a sweet memoir about an editor of the Paris Review who buys a deli along with his wife to satisfy her mother. The wife is of Korean heritage and the children have an obligation to pay back their parents for all that was given to them as children. Ben, the author, and his family find a deli in Brooklyn which needs work but satisfies their needs. Kay, the mother in law works hard at the deli and makes up for any inadequacy that Ben and his wife, Gab have. A local African-American...more

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May 30, 2012 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

These days it's not uncommon for educated, upper middle class white people in their twenties or thirties to quit their corporate jobs and take up, say, artisanal cheese making or small-scale radicchio farming. There's this desire to be productive and see the fruits of your labor, to work with your hands, to feel the sweat on your brow. But what you don't see is an educated 31-year-old male WASP, an editor at The Paris Review, who spends the $30,000 he and his wife, Gab, a corporate lawyer, have...more These days it's not uncommon for educated, upper middle class white people in their twenties or thirties to quit their corporate jobs and take up, say, artisanal cheese making or small-scale radicchio farming. There's this desire to be productive and see the fruits of your labor, to work with your hands, to feel the sweat on your brow. But what you don't see is an educated 31-year-old male WASP, an editor at The Paris Review, who spends the $30,000 he and his wife, Gab, a corporate lawyer, have saved, and buy a Korean convenience store for his mother-in-law, a formidable 55-year-old Korean woman named Kay. On nights and weekends Ben Ryder Howe stocks shelves, orders products, and shops at convenience store supply warehouses. By day, Howe works for famed Paris Review editor George Plimpton, organizing readings with Jamaica Kincaid and Robert Pinsky, and reading and editing potential literary masterpieces.

The book deals in a lot of conflict, mainly between Howe and his mother-in-law, Kay, as well as with his wife, Gab. Kay wants to keep the inventory as is, while Howe wants to appeal to the rapidly gentrifying section of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, for example, replacing the horrible coffee that the existing customers love with a local Brooklyn brew. Then there's the internal conflict of working in a very white collar, intellectual elite job and a blue-collar one. Although I did enjoy reading about The Paris Review, I felt that Howe went off on way too many tangents, when I was a lot more interested in reading about the deli. Howe has a David Sedaris-like quality of making mundane or sad happenings into stories a lot more exciting or interesting than they actually are. There are some funny moments--like Kay holding up a box of condoms and loudly asking which customers would prefer, studded or ribbed--and some sad ones, too, and you find yourself rooting for them to succeed. However, I didn't like Howe at all. I found him to be really elitist and dismissive of his wife's Korean culture. I'm married to a Korean-American son of convenience store owners, and I checked out this book on audio, thinking that he might enjoy hearing about the commonalities they might share. He did, but we were both put off by his attitude. He doesn't seem like he's even tried to accept or embrace Korean culture, referring with disgust to the "fermented cabbage" in the fridge and his in-laws' Staten Island basement with relatives constantly staying. He claims that he wants to start selling high quality products to be forward-thinking and cater to the new population growing in Boerum Hill, but it seems like he just wants a store that he can be proud of.

There don't seem to be a lot of books about a white-collar person opening a convenience store, so if you're interested in the subject, I'd recommend My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store. But be forewarned that Howe's tone can be a bit abrasive. I listened to it on audiobook, and I think that narrator Bronson Pinchot decreased my enjoyment of the book. He can't do accents at all--Kay sounded German instead of Korean, and I don't even know what the Arabic characters were supposed to be.(less)

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Dec 08, 2011 Kate Z rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books which really sums up the book club experience for me. I didn't *want* to read this and I wouldn't have but for it being selected by my book club as our December 2011 read. Memoirs aren't really my thing and that's even more true when it comes to reading a memoir for a book club selection. I have a very snooty attitude when it comes to book club selections - I like to talk about THE BOOK and one thing I really appreciate about the book club I'm involved with is how on p...more This is one of those books which really sums up the book club experience for me. I didn't *want* to read this and I wouldn't have but for it being selected by my book club as our December 2011 read. Memoirs aren't really my thing and that's even more true when it comes to reading a memoir for a book club selection. I have a very snooty attitude when it comes to book club selections - I like to talk about THE BOOK and one thing I really appreciate about the book club I'm involved with is how on point we tend to stay. The anecdotes told during our book club meetings tend to relate directly to the book being discussed and that's how I like it. With a memoir what is there, really, to discuss? By definition, a memoir is the larger conclusions about mankind and life in general that the writer has gleaned through living his or her life. It's hard to argue with those. They may not be the conclusions YOU would reach, but you haven't lived that person's life ... So I was a reluctant reader here but in the end, although I'm not willing to say this was a great book or an "everyone should read this book" kind of memoir, I enjoyed my time Howe's My Korean Deli.

I was afraid of a pithy melting pot kind of book where all walks of life and socio-economic status walk though the titular deli (really, convenience store) and the writer's horizons are broadened beyond the literary, ivory towered world of the Paris Review. Happily, that wasn't what this book was.

First, the Paris Review became *much* more appealing to me (I subscribed ... merry Christmas to me). Second, I fell in love with George Plimpton. Wish he was still alive - I'd probably try to follow more of his doings if he was. The reason I fell in love with George Plimpton says more about this book than it does about Plimpton's character (at least the character viewed through the lens of this book). What comes across in this memoir is that Howe believes that people are basically good. He actually LIKES people - and that comes across in every part of this memoir and it probably had the greatest amount to do with my own enjoyment of this otherwise pretty inconsequential book. Not a lot happens and the world view that Howe espouses isn't revelatory in nature - but Howe comes across as a good guy who likes people and sometimes, as a reader, it's nice to spend time in that kind of "space."

I love sarcasm and social criticism as much as the next guy - one of my favorite books this year was Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story but if Howe had been a Calvinist I wouldn't have liked this book nearly as well.

The book was a bit heavy handed with the whole Puritans vs. (Korean) immigrant point but, nevertheless, despite the lack of subtlety, that point was made. I found it a warm, likeable book by an author with just the right mixture of intellectual curiousity, self-deprecation, humor and appreciation and love for his fellow man. He managed to convey a love of his wife and in laws that combined with a realism without any trace of underlying dislike. He managed to revere and fear his mother in law at the same time (kind of how I feel about my own mother in law's super ability at all times) without the expected trace of hostility.

This isn't a *great* book but it was easy to read and I'm glad I read it and feel enriched to some extent by the time I spent with Ben Ryder Howe and "[His] Korean Deli".(less)

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May 19, 2011 Khaya rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, memoirs, humorous-or-trying-to-be

If this book had been fiction, it would have been way, way over the top. I mean, what the heck were these people thinking, abandoning prestigious white collar jobs to buy a convenience store in a semi-sketchy neighborhood in downtown Brooklyn with absolutely no experience? Having finished the book I'm still not sure, despite some vague explanation about a weird expression of gratitude from Ben's wife to her Korean parents.

So you've got this bizarre and highly unlikely situation, starring the au...more

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May 07, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

If I could have given this another half star, I would have, but I didn't like it enough to round up an entire star. This memoir was occasionally funny, interesting, and quick to get through. My biggest complaint about this book was the author's wife. Maybe it's my tendency to fixate on things that aren't that central to the overall theme of the book, but I couldn't help feeling like she was overbearing and unapologetic with a need for constant validation. This drove me crazy and distracted me fr...more

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