Of course Midwest Kosher & Deli has lox.
“We do,” says store manager Aryeh Kramer while sitting at a table inside South Bend's only kosher delicatessen on a bright, sunny Wednesday afternoon, as he politely answers a question about this smoked salmon breakfast delicacy that would just as easily could have been set by Captain Obvious.
“Right now, we have a lot of pastrami, corned beef, things like that,” he says, “as well as the regular cold sandwiches.”
And when Midwest Kosher installs its new kitchen, its menu will expand.
“We're putting a new kitchen in the deli so we can have a hot food menu,” says Kramer. “It will be, hopefully, adding a lot of the more Jewish-style schnitzel sandwiches and … different kinds of high-end hamburgers and some steak sandwiches, grilled chicken, things like that. Right now, we only have, basically, house-made corned beef, but hopefully we'll have a lot more of our own stuff, our own smoked turkeys, pastrami, and it could be a little more fun.”
The kosher deli on South Bend's south side at 506 W. Ireland Road in Erskine Commons just west of US 31 began a little more than three years ago when a local Jewish family opened its doors.
Kramer, who grew up in upstate New York City in Rockland County, had worked in the food business since high school “doing catering jobs and working at friend's delis and delis,” as well as in the kosher department of a large supermarket in Jewel-Osco chain of stores, which also took him to New Jersey.
When people he knew contacted Kramer about helping put a kosher deli on the map in South Bend, a city with a larger-than-average Midwest Jewish community where two other kosher delis had closed since 2003, he saw a unique opportunity. which did not exist on the East Coast, where Jewish delis are everywhere.
“It's a completely different culture—first of all, the East Coast is all metropolis, the cost of living is a fortune, and, yes, there's a ton of takeaways and restaurants, and if you want to eat it, they've got it Kramer says. “In my two blocks where I lived out there, there were more Jewish families than there are in this whole (South Bend) community.
A visit to South Bend sealed the deal for Kramer.
“I liked the quality of life, the setting and the opportunity,” he says. “It's a small Jewish community here, and they were looking for someone with experience to open a business like this, and they reached out to some people that I knew and I took them with me, and I went to visit here … and I gave it a shot.”
The first job for a Jewish deli in an overwhelmingly Catholic community is to explain the kosher business to a layperson.
“The basic idea is that it has to follow a certain process,” says Kramer, explaining how “certain animals” are selected and checked for disease before they are “properly slaughtered” with “a certain kind of knife, a sharp knife.
“(Jews are not) allowed to eat blood, we have to salt the meat and we have to take care of it that way,” says Kramer. “So there's literally a whole checklist, especially with meat products and cultured products, that they have to go through to make it kosher.”
The kosher process is what turns smoked salmon into authentic lox, or nova—the highly recommended Jewish breakfast of champions on a bagel with a schmeer of cream cheese with a slice of tomato and onion. The lox is packaged at Midwest Kosher & Deli, and like the bagels, it's from Chicago, but it's all kosher.
“Good products for the most part,” Kramer says of kosher foods in general, “and they're generally healthier. Controlled and supervised from start to finish. There is not a single part of the process that is unsupervised.”
A big hearty mazel tov to that.
• What: Jewish deli with pastrami, corned beef, smoked turkey, lox and kosher foods
• Where: 506 W. Ireland Road, South Bend
• Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday to Thursday. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday? 10 am. to 4 p.m. on Sundays
• Prices: Sandwiches $7.99-$6.99. cold meats by the pound $18.99-$7.99; combo meals $9.49-$7.99
• For more information: Call 574-855-1791 or visit midwestkosherdeli.com
