The only guarantee? Pure chaos. The first thing viewers see is a mostly naked man, bloodied and with a paper bag over his head, running out of the ABC Deli. We quickly learn that Baba immigrated to the United States with just $3 in his pocket, building an empire of ABC Delis in Philadelphia and beyond on the back of the Mega Glug, a gallon-sized, reusable mug that can still fit into a car’s cup holder. All the while, Baba was building an equally large illegal business, importing cocaine from Peru, and engaging in a whole host of fraudulent activities in pursuit of the American dream.
His sons, of course, couldn’t be more different from their father — or each other. Raj is a pot-smoking, shaman-dating bon vivant, and Mir is a neurotic over-achiever who can’t stop talking about his Drexel University degree and his desire to be named CEO of his father’s company, DarCo. They’re both spoiled brats entirely unaware of their father’s illicit business, making them ill-prepared to step up into his role as a fearsome drug lord. Fortunately, they’ve got their tough-yet-glamorous auntie Lucky (Poorna Jagannathan) to show them the ropes, even though she thinks they’re both idiots and has her sights set on taking over Baba’s business herself. It’s this tenuous, and unsubtle, ally who shows them how their father came up with the ingenious idea of stuffing kilos of cocaine into pungent jars of achaar, or South Asian pickles, to confuse the noses of drug-sniffing dogs.
Things get even more complicated when the FBI busts into DarCo headquarters, arrests Auntie Lucky, and accuses the late Baba of engaging in decades of fraud and tax evasion, shutting down the delis entirely. That’s all before the brothers find out about “dark DarCo,” the hidden side of the business in which the delis are used as a front for a sophisticated cocaine operation.
With the delis out of commission, Lucky, Raj, and Mir are tasked with developing a new distribution route for their cocaine. Mir has the brilliant idea to run the jars of achaar through an Indian restaurant, which he says wouldn’t raise suspicion. However, he quickly runs into his family’s own anti-Indian racism — and a really shrewd restaurant owner — as they try to negotiate the deal. From there, the hijinks only go further off the rails as the brothers Dar try to dodge rival gangsters with an eye on their territory, the cops, and their own incompetence.
Throughout its 10 episodes, Deli Boys proves itself to be a deeply Philadelphia show, frequently going well beyond the TastyKakes on the shelves of ABC Deli to use food to illustrate its love for the city. There’s a philosophical meditation on the cheesesteak (an argument asserting it as the true exemplar of something that’s more than the sum of its parts), and it’s surprisingly profound. At an Eagles-watching party in another episode, fans of the reigning Super Bowl champions will notice a soft pretzel sculpture in the likeness of Nick Foles, the quarterback who helped the franchise win its first Super Bowl in 2018. In keeping with other Philly-set shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Abbott Elementary, Deli Boys revels a bit in its home city’s gritty, rough-around-the-edges reputation.
If you love the breakneck intensity of The Bear, which also airs on Hulu, Deli Boys will likely be right up your alley. It is decidedly a dark comedy with no shortage of gore and violence, most of which are played for laughs. Stabbings, shootings, and even dismemberment will inspire a chuckle or two in most people watching, but anyone who’s a little more squeamish will probably be turned off by its gratuitous use of fake blood. What the two shows achieve, though, is an exploration of sibling dynamics and family expectations against the unrelenting chaos of running the family business. It’s just that in this case, the family business also involves running drugs.
The show also takes an irreverent look at the expectations heaped onto the shoulders of the children of immigrants, who are sometimes expected to live a version of the “American Dream” that just doesn’t feel possible anymore. It somehow manages to deftly navigate turning heavy issues like racism, assimilation, and Islamophobia into the butt of many jokes. There are no flat “model minorities” or other stereotypes here, just a bunch of complicated (occasionally terrible) people trying to figure out how to sell a little cocaine.
What really sells the slapstick jokes and gratuitous violence, though, is the show’s cast. For all the violence, this is really a meditation on what it means to be family, and there’s a whole lot of heart between the gunshots and cocaine-cooking. Poorna Jagannathan is excellent as the tough-as-nails aunty whose backstory with Baba is more complicated than Raj and Mir know. A feat only achieved because the on-screen interplay between Raj’s stoner sensibilities and Mir’s neuroses is just that good. I could believe that Saagar Shaikh and Asif Ali were actually brothers in real life based on the nuances of their seemingly long-simmering grudges and ill-timed spats. Even its brief performances, like Queer Eye fashion expert Tan France’s surprising turn as a gun-wielding gangster and the hopeless bumbling of FBI Director Simpson (Tim Baitz), are equally compelling.
While Deli Boys is not explicitly a food show, which actually feels a little refreshing in this context. It doesn’t use platters of biryani to convey its cultural competence, instead employing inside jokes and “if you know you know” references to explore the layered identities of its characters. There are still some great food moments, though — the aforementioned pretzel sculpture truly is a marvel — to get you through the rest of the mayhem and violence.
Deli Boys is streaming on Hulu on March 6.
