RESTAURANT REVIEW : Jerry’s in Encino Offers Too Much to Be Just a Deli

Some is good. More is better. Too much is just right.

Words many people live by in Southern California, and a good slogan for Jerry’s Famous Deli of Encino, a flashier, more self-confident version of the larger Jerry’s down the boulevard in Studio City. Everything about this place is too much: the sound-stage decor, the oversized menu, the overflow crowds, the overflowing hype.

Then you spot movie industry types nibbling on duck salad and fajitas. In a deli!

Yes, I realize this is California, but I’m outraged that these dishes are on the menu anyway. If Zero Mostel were still alive, he would personally escort anyone eating them from the premises, just as he did at Katz’s in New York when someone ordered pastrami with lettuce and tomato. If I weren’t a consummate professional, I might have done the same.

No complaints about Jerry’s pastrami, though. It’s a lean, spicy cut, with a peppery top crust. The counterman slices it into a generous mound before piling it on the relatively undistinguished house rye bread. The corned beef here is even leaner, thickly sliced but not nearly as moist.

And just to prove Jerry’s is serious about its sandwiches, there are jars of Gulden’s mustard on every table. Try putting that on duck salad. Hah!

Actually, I found most of the cooking here rather serious. It’s just, well, too much. The bath towel-sized menu is so crammed with entries, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Personally, I’d start with soup, one of the big draws at this restaurant. Probably the killer matzo ball, one enormous, fluffy spheroid in a porcelain crock of rich chicken broth and shredded chicken meat, or the mushroom barley, a hearty bowlful chock full of barley. Pass on the gummy kreplach, a doughy ball that will sink to your stomach like an anchor.

At Jerry’s, the menu has a section called appetizers, referring to things like chopped liver, stuffed kishka, and potato pirogen. Now I love these dishes--my mother made all three of them--but calling them appetizers is like calling earthquake damage a tax incentive.

However, the kishka is great, a fat sausage casing bursting with a stuffing of carrots, flour, and chicken fat. Eat it with the thick, caramel-colored gravy served on the side. Potato pirogen are little pockets of boiled dough filled with a potato puree and smeared with sour cream, Russian style. And the chopped liver is wonderful, airy without being light. Even an agent wouldn’t be hungry after eating a plateful.

On the lighter side, Jerry’s serves a mean chopped salad, a huge bowl of lettuce, carrot, cucumber, salami, bell pepper, turkey, ham, and cheese. The Greek salad has lots of crumbly feta and a choice of anchovies or the less Hellenic herring.

Of the fish, nova tastes about the best--smooth, buttery, and properly salty. Eat it with cream cheese on one of the good house bagels. Sable and sturgeon, two rarefied white fish with a lower salt content and a higher price tag, are almost always available. I found them a bit bland, certainly too delicate for cream cheese and Bermuda onion. Whitefish, chubs, or gefilte fish may satisfy the purists. I didn’t get to the gefilte fish. Sentimentality only counts for so much.

Come for breakfast (served 24 hours a day), and you’ll find the full gamut from pancakes to omelets, plus a good selection of pastries. Come for lunch or dinner, and there is a whole section of the menu devoted to cooked dishes, ones like stuffed cabbage, short ribs, or Wienerschnitzel.

I’d have something from the rotisserie, like roasted duck, or a superbly juicy and crisp skinned chicken. Jerry’s is something of a paradise for chicken lovers. Chickens are boiled, stewed, roasted, fried, or barbecued, and all versions are really meaty. Turkey’s good here too.

For sweet tooths, there is no shortage of dessert. The menu boasts cheesecakes flown in from New York. Big deal. They are the dry, crumbly kind, and I found them unexceptional. Bread pudding, a custardy interpretation, is far better. It is baked on the premises and served with thick whipped cream.

It doesn’t end there. Napoleons, eclairs, and cookies are always in stock, plus any number of fountain treats like egg creams, phosphates, or malts. Of course, maybe it would be better to show some restraint.

But watch it. Not too much.

Recommended dishes; kishka with gravy, $4.35, matzo ball soup, $3.60, New York-style pastrami sandwich, $7.35, nova lox on a bagel, $8.35, rotisserie half-chicken, $9.50.

Jerry’s Famous Deli, 16650 Ventura Blvd., Encino. (818) 906-1800. Open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Parking in lot. Beer and wine only. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $20-$35.