We were in Worcester for breakfast for reasons I do not recall right now. I got it in my head that I wanted something I have only seen at the Broadway Diner, on Water Street near Kelley Square: the Matzoh and Eggs with black coffee.

It's not a photogenic dish, but it's a hearty breakfast on a cold December morning, especially with their corned beef hash.

The Broadway is at one end of a long block off Kelley Square that is known for its great collection of Jewish deli-style food. From the cheese blintzes and the matzoh-and-eggs at the Broadway Diner to Widoff's Bakery and Weintraub's Deli, I suddenly knew I needed something more.

Like Coney Island Hot Dogs nearby, Weintraub's has been around for a long time, and Weintraub's really looks it. The inside appears to be unchanged from about 1940. A menu from that year adorns one wall, shilling house specials like pickled herring, frankforts and eggs, and Pickwick Ale. Sandwiches included Roumanian pastrami, tongue, mixed meat, and sardine, perhaps to be washed down with a glass of Tokay.

"Every bite a delight" was the motto then, though today it looks more like an adventure. I couldn't resist. I lived near a Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx as a child and again in college, so it wasn't all that unfamiliar to me. I always like to get the local specialties that I can't get in Pymouth, so naturally I got a half-pound each of whitefish salad and chopped liver, a half-sour pickle and a can of Dr Brown's Cel-Ray celery soda to make a lunch at some later date.

I didn't wait too long for that lunch. Chopped liver isn't so photogenic itself. It's not for nothing that the stuff has become the quintessential wallflower food at kosher buffets.

But lunch was just what I had been looking for. I won't call it exquisite, but the nostalgia sure was. It was a sort of northwest Bronx soul food. I wished I had stopped in at Widoff's Bakery across Water Street for some of their delicious Jewish Rye Bread. I shouldn't be eating bread, but really, chopped liver and celery soda is health food?