Wise Sons Deli Brings Pastrami to SF Jewish Museum

This post first appeared on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

Wise Sons: Evan Bloom (left) and Leo Beckerman serve up nouveau deli sandwiches at their shop in San Francisco and soon at the city’s Jewish museum.

For those who may have been wondering whether new tastes would arrive at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco with its new director, there is now an answer. While Lori Starr will not officially become the museum’s new executive director until June 10, word is already out that Wise Sons will be moving into the downtown museum’s vacant restaurant not long afterwards.

Wise Sons’ Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman, who are among the leaders of the Jewish deli revival of recent years, told j., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, that they were very excited to open a second location at CJM. “It’s the next logical step for us,” Bloom said about the projected mid-to-late June opening.

To accommodate the additional food production involved in expanding beyond their restaurant at the corner of 24th and Shotwell Streets in the Mission District, Bloom and Beckerman have leased a new space that will allow for the increased production of baked goods and cured meats.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Shorty’s Deli Comes Up Short In San Francisco

This review was first published on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

I recently ate lunch with some family members at Shorty Goldstein’s and was overwhelmed…by the vinegar. I’m afraid that if chef and owner Michael Siegel doesn’t change some things at his new deli in San Francisco’s financial district, he’s going to be in a real pickle.

When I spoke to Siegel in December of last year, as he was working on opening his restaurant (really, more of a lunch counter), he told me that he would serve lots of Jewish deli classics, but that he would add his own, contemporary California-style twists to them. “It will be a mix between tradition and my style, which is a little nouveau,” he said.

The problem I found is that these changes Siegel has made are detracting from the authentic deli food that he is doing right. The biggest issue is his pickles. All you get when you eat them is an overpowering bite of vinegar. The vegetables’ natural flavors are lost, and there are no discernable spices.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Tel Aviv’s Never Ending Coffee Cup

This piece first appeared on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

Do you have a caffeine addiction to feed, but not much money to do so? Then consider moving to Tel Aviv. Since September, Tel Aviv residents have been able to get all the coffee they want for NIS 169 ($45) per month, thanks to a new loyalty program called CUPS-Unlimited Coffee.

The program “goes across not a specific chain, but across independent and franchise stores we signed up for the program,” Alon Ezer, the company’s CEO, told The Times of Israel. “As far as I know, this is the only such loyalty program anywhere in the world, and it holds a great promise for not only coffee shops, but for brick-and-mortar retailers of all kinds.”

It’s really quite simple: A customer pays the monthly all-you-can-drink fee, or alternatively NIS 99 ($27) per month for just one cup of coffee per day. A map on an app that you download to your iPhone or Android phone shows you where all the participating cafes and coffee kiosks are, including the one closest to you. You go to any of the establishments, order any drink you want (no matter how fancy, frothy or creamy), let the barista tap a code into the app on your phone, and you’re done…at least for the next 30 minutes. After half an hour, you can do the same thing all over again at the same café. If you absolutely cannot wait the 30 minutes, then you can go to another participating café and order that second cup right away.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.