Deli owners in S.F., Baltimore make Super Bowl bet

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

A Super Bowl bet between a Jewish delicatessen in Baltimore and one in San Francisco isn’t exactly chopped liver.

The wager between 98-year-old Attman’s deli in Baltimore and Miller’s East Coast in San Francisco is for $500 to a Jewish charity of the winner’s choice — plus the losing side has to put in one day of work wearing the T-shirts and caps of the winning city’s deli.

“So we’ll be wearing Miller’s T-shirts, and so will Attman’s,” quipped Miller’s owner Robby Morgenstein, confident of a San Francisco 49ers victory over the Baltimore Ravens in New Orleans.

Morgenstein is a Baltimore native, and his cousin, Debbie, is married to Marc Attman, the owner of Attman’s. Another cousin used to own Miller’s deli in Baltimore, which in part inspired Morgenstein to open Miller’s East Coast West in San Francisco in 2001. He closed, re-opened and changed the name slightly a few years later, and last year opened a second location in San Rafael.

Miller’s East Coast goes into this bet riding a winning streak. In October 2012, Miller’s made a World Series bet with his meat supplier, Sy Ginsberg’s United Meat and Deli in Detroit. After the Giants’ four-game sweep of the Tigers, Ginsberg donated $500 to the Jewish Home of San Francisco. — andy altman-ohr

Andy Altman-Ohr

Andy Altman-Ohr was J.’s managing editor and Hardly Strictly Bagels columnist until he retired in 2016 to travel and live abroad. He and his wife have a home base in Mexico, where he continues his dalliance with Jewish journalism.