Isle of Palms Magazine Summer 2017

19 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com Celebrities who called the Stage Deli their favorite place ran the gamut from actors to sports figures to just plain folks. Hungry folks. A mere sampling of some of the well-known names who frequented the landmark eatery would include Yankee sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris – who shared an apartment over the restaurant early in their careers – Mike Tyson, Pete Rose, Hank Bauer, Ron Blomberg, Donnie Wahlberg, Adam Sandler, Roseanne Barr, Linda Lavin, Martin Short, Tony Curtis, Jackie Mason, Milton Berle, Joey Brown, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Nipsy Russell, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Even famed writer Damon Runyon and gossip columnist Walter Winchell were frequent diners. And one night the entire Philadelphia Phillies baseball team stopped by. Presiding over it all for 25 of those glorious years before the Stage finally closed its doors in 2012 was Steve Auerbach, who now lives in Wild Dunes with his wife, April, a Charleston native. Steve’s father, Louis, was a Polish Holocaust survivor who after the war arrived in America unable to speak English but with plenty of determination and entrepreneurial spirit. He parlayed a Brooklyn candy store – more of a mini-general store back in those days – into a string of diners and eventually to co-ownership of the Stage Delicatessen. He believed the restaurant was being run poorly and set out to make it better. Son Steve, who graduated from the University of Maryland, wasn’t sure whether he wanted to go into the family business. But, in 1985, one of Louis’ partners passed away and another lost interest and wanted to be bought out. Steve stepped in and, after working for his father for six years, took over Louis’ stake in the restaurant. He immediately inherited the vestiges of what a New York City tabloid had dubbed “The Deli Wars,” a reference to the sometimes fierce competition between the Stage and its rival, the Carnegie, located on 7th Avenue. From the beginning, both delis had served sandwiches with 6 ounces of meat. When one upped the ante to 8 ounces, the other raised the bar to 10. Eventually, both were serving the 12- to 14-ounce jawbreakers for which they became famous. “We never actually made any money on those overstuffed sandwiches,” Steve Auerbach explained. “Our profits came from soda and cole slaw and everything else we served.” In 2008, the economic recession hit the Stage badly and, in 2012, with the rent escalating, Auerbach knew it Aretha Franklin Howie Mandel Henry Winkler and Ron Howard Dizzie Gillespie