Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen

Who This Is For — and When to Go

If you are planning a leisurely weekend brunch in Houston and want something genuinely different from the city's usual Tex-Mex and brunch-cocktail circuit, Kenny & Ziggy's is the right call. This is the place for a late Saturday morning with family, a low-key celebration that does not require a reservation months in advance, or any occasion where you want generously portioned food and a room that feels like it has been around long enough to mean something. It is also one of the few places in Houston where a Jewish-style New York delicatessen experience is done with real commitment rather than as a novelty.

The Portrait

Kenny & Ziggy's sits on Post Oak Boulevard in the Galleria corridor, from the moment you walk in, the kitchen announces itself before the menu does. The smell of cured meat, rye bread, hot pastrami fat is the first thing you register — a sensory cue that is either immediately comforting or immediately clarifying about whether this style of eating is for you. There is no ambiguity about what kind of place this is.

Chef Ziggy Gruber built this restaurant on the model of the great New York delis, those high-volume, full-service institutions that have largely disappeared from their home city. The food is deli food: corned beef, pastrami, matzo ball soup, towering sandwiches, latkes, lox plates. Houston does not have another place operating at this level of specificity and seriousness in this category. For the dedicated deli format, Kenny & Ziggy's is the only serious option in the city.

The Opinionated About Dining platform ranked Kenny & Ziggy's in its Cheap Eats in North America list in both 2023 (Recommended) and 2024 (#318), which is a meaningful signal for a venue of this type. OAD Cheap Eats recognition skews toward places where value-to-quality ratio is genuinely high, where the food itself drives the recommendation rather than the room or the service theater.

For brunch specifically, the deli format is well-suited: egg dishes, lox and cream cheese, bagels, blintzes, the kind of portions that make a late breakfast a plausible substitute for lunch. Weekend mornings here read as a celebration meal for people who grew up with this food, as a discovery meal for those who did not. Either framing works.

For a special occasion framing, Kenny & Ziggy's works well when the occasion is informal and food-focused: a birthday with a group of friends who eat well, a family gathering where the table wants to share plates, or an anniversary brunch where the focus is on pleasure over formality. It does not work as a backdrop for a business meal requiring quiet and tableside service polish. For that kind of occasion in Houston, you would be better served by Le Jardinier Houston or March.

Nationally, the closest comparisons in the deli category are Langer's Deli in Los Angeles and Schwartz's in Montreal, both of which have decades of category authority. Kenny & Ziggy's sits in that same tier of seriousness for its format: not a casual sandwich shop, but a full-service deli operating with genuine category conviction.

Practical Details

Reservations: Walk-ins are generally manageable here, booking difficulty is easy, the format supports drop-in dining more readily than tasting-menu or high-demand restaurants. Weekend brunch peak hours will have waits, so arriving before 10:30 AM or after 1:30 PM reduces the queue. Dress: No dress code; come as you are. Budget: OAD's Cheap Eats classification suggests pricing that sits well below Houston's fine-dining tier, expect to eat well without a significant per-head spend.Location: 1743 Post Oak Blvd, Houston, TX 77056, in the Galleria area, accessible by car with parking available nearby.