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Food

Fillmore District Gets Deli and All the Weekly Dish

A once-Jewish San Francisco neighborhood gets a new deli.

The empire keeps expanding. Owners Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman opened a new location in San Francisco’s historically Jewish Fillmore neighborhood last week.

The Fillmore District once thrived “with Jewish-owned bakeries, restaurants, shops and kosher markets. There were synagogues, a Yiddish Cultural Center and a Jewish school, which helped transform the Fillmore into a hub for Jewish culture,” writes Hoodline.com, a neighborhood blog.

The new Wise Sons outpost will serve bagel sandwiches, appetizing items like smoked fish and deli meats and house-made hummus and cream cheese.

Chopped Kosher

It’s like the Food Network’s Chopped with an added soupçon of suspense: The University of Wisconsin’s Hillel’s kosher resto, Adamah Neighborhood Table, will host “Kosher Chopped,” a Hebraic riff on the cooking throwdown. The twist here: Everything must be done according to the laws of kashrut.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to make a lot of mistakes,” local sushi chef Shinji Muramoto told Madison, Wisconsin’s CapTimes. The event takes place March 7.

Deli Man Going Kosher?

‘Deli Man’ Ziggy Gruber of Houston’s Kenny & Ziggy’s.

For one night only, famed Deli Man Ziggy Gruber is going kosher — sort of.

Grow and Behold, a purveyor of kosher pastured meats, is partnering with a local Modern Orthodox congregation to provide kosher deli sandwiches for the March 17 premiere of Deli Man at this year’s Boulder Jewish Film Festival.

Gruber’s Houston deli, Kenny & Ziggy’s, isn’t kosher (but is delicious).

Kansas City To Get a Deli

Relief is on the way for deli-deprived denizens of Kansas City. Pastrami sandwiches will be a staple on the menu at Speak, a new delicatessen coming from foodie couple Todd Schulte and Tracy Zinn, who own local soup business Uncommon Stock.

“I’m German and from Baltimore, but I grew up around Jewish people and Jewish delis, and I think Kansas City needs one,” Schulte tells KansasCity.com.

England Likes Eisenberg’s

Image by Facebook/Eisenberg's

The Jewish Chronicle, the London-based Jewish newspaper, has a surprise new fave Jewish deli in NYC: Eisenberg’s, the humble sandwich shop in the shadow of the Flatiron building.

“It’s the real deal, with an on-the-premises owner who, from the kaynahorah look of him, eats there several times a day,” writes Jonathan Margolis.

When we worked in the neighborhood in the ’90s, we were regulars for Eisenberg’s enormous tuna melts — and the wisecracking, seen-it-all counter guys.

Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.

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