Originally Published in the Brookline TAB August 1998
You know that I write about Brookline and its commercial districts. This column is often about the noble individuals who struggle to maintain their businesses and imbue our community with value and meaning. These people are celebrities to me because it is they who make Brookline such a special place to live (I’m not taking anything away from the green spaces, historic buildings, safe, clean streets or proximity to Boston). Kenny Jaffe is such a person. As both a townie and a celebrity, he represents the missing link between the old Brookline of yore and the new Brookline ahead.
Who? Kenny Jaffe, now Program Director for Bay State Federal’s Charitable Foundation. Still drawing a blank? Jaffe’s Pick-a-Chick? Pick-a-Chick Underground Deli? KJ’s? You know – tall, mustache? If you lived in Brookline, chances are, he served you a corned beef sandwich or a bowl of matzah ball soup. You might not remember him, but you’re in the minority.
His last venture, K.J.’s, went under, but Kenny Jaffe is still so recognizable that even if he’s opening a $100,000 CD for someone they will inevitably ask him for his potato salad recipe or for his father’s top secret recipe for chopped liver. “I’m asked about it every day. Not in the Foundation, but in the Bank. We’re doing bank business and people still approach me to tell me that my father catered their son’s bar-mitzvah.”
Kenny is different from other Brookline merchants whose businesses are no longer. While they retired, were forced out, sold the business to Starbucks, passed it down or left town, Kenny is still here in 02146. He made his bones working at his father’s place, Jaffe’s Pick A Chick (located where Videosmith is now) in the late forties. In 1988 he struck out on his own with his own rotisserie and deli, Pick-a-Chick Underground Deli (located where Casa Mia is now) and seven years later, K.J.’s (now the home of Zaftigs). The original Pick-a-Chick was an institution. “Of course those were the days when the S.S.Pierce Building had S.S.Pierce in it.”
“Those were the days when you could go to another Coolidge Corner institution like Waldorf’s (where Cambridge Eye Doctors was) get a tray, cafeteria style, and put it down, and there would be affordable half grapefruits. In those days you weren’t paying for the whole citrus crop.”
Jaffe said that he shops locally and is firmly committed to supporting small businesses, but recognizes that the cost of doing business in Brookline is probably keeping a lot of the small businesses away.
“I miss Jack and Marions. I miss the local hardware stores and the hat shops, but most of all, I kind of miss Adam & Eve. It was the stylish store. It brought an interesting, different crowd to Coolidge Corner, and it wasn’t a CVS or an eyeglass store.”
Asked what went wrong with his own restaurant, Jaffe said that with K.J.’s, he had gotten “in over his head.” After it closed, he was out of work for the longest period of his life—six weeks.
During this time he was at undergoing some routine tests at the hospital when an unrequested test revealed early stage Kidney cancer, which he beat. Later, walking “blindly” through Brookline, he was approached by Denise Renaghan,Executive VPand COO of Bay State Federal Savings who pulled up next to him and asked what he was doing. She offered him a job at BSFS, and he jumped at the chance, despite his own confession that the most complex calculations he had ever done were for the amount of meat on a pastrami sandwich, and the best writing he had done was his menu.
Within a year, he was given the title of Program Director of the Bay State Federal Savings Charitable Foundation, a title of which he is proud. “I’m first and foremost a townie,”he said. “There are not a lot of us left, but there are even less of us that can give back to the community and make a difference.”
On his recent promotion, he added “The community supported my family for 50 years. Now I have the opportunity to give something back. I have the opportunity to make Brookline a better place to live—which essentially was my goal the whole time, and my father’s before me.” Now he can do it with money instead of one pastrami sandwich at a time.
He admitted that he still craves a corned beef sandwich every day, but still wouldn’t reveal the secret recipe for chopped liver to me. We agreed that the fact that he can guide the foundation to give amounts that count to the town that raised him, as well as to the type of medical programs that saved him, is wonderful.
Jaffe looks forward to hearing from Brookline’s charitable causes and any old customers (but no take-out orders, please). His number is 617-739-9678.
He plans to continue the work he did at his restaurants, of working with the elderly, community donations, and general goodwill, and gave the impression that we should expect to see his fingerprints all over a host of exciting new allocations around our beloved town. He was still in awe that a failed restaurant dream and a cancer scare could lead him to a place where he could do and return so much good. “And that” he said, “has meaning.”