The Usual, With a Plot Twist..

or… We Were Left Unsupervised with the Menu

Celebrity Delly's Grazing Boards designed to share between 2-4ppl.

It’s been a while since I sat down to write one of these. Judging by everything we’ve been introducing, you might reasonably assume I’ve been spending that time wondering what else we can put beer cheese on. That would be unfair.

I’ve also been thinking about fries.

There have been grazing boards, smaller sandwiches, new ways to build your own meal, local beers, dinners to take home, and enough photography to suggest several of our sandwiches now have a PR firm backing them. Taken individually, they probably look like a restaurant adding things to its menu. Fair enough.

That is technically what we’re doing.

But I keep coming back to a question underneath all of it: what do you do with a Jewish deli that has been part of people’s lives since 1975? How do you protect what people love about it without deciding that everything worth doing has already been done? Moreover, how do we keep things fresh without losing our identity?

I love the New York deli experience, and judging by how you all keep coming back, I’m guessing you do too. The generous sandwich, the familiar faces, the conversation that somehow becomes an argument about mustard before anybody has finished their coffee. There’s comfort in knowing what you’re walking into, especially when the rest of your day has been spent adjusting to things you didn’t ask to have adjusted

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But does familiar have to mean finished?

We’ve spent a lot of time in this column talking about what gets lost when things change. I still care deeply about that. What I don’t want is to confuse preserving a place with keeping it perfectly still. Some have said to me, “Why add all of these new menu items?” The truth is, restaurants aren’t museums. The restaurants we remember weren’t museums when we fell in love with them. They were places where something was happening. When you stay stagnant, that’s how museums turn into mausoleums.

I’d like something to keep happening here.

A little of that. Some of this. Who ordered those?

Imagine going out with a few people and watching the food arrive. You’ve made your decision, committed to your sandwich, and then somebody across the table gets something that immediately makes you question your judgment. Now there’s a negotiation underway. Half a slider for an onion ring. A bite of cheesesteak in exchange for access to the fries.

We could pretend this is undignified behavior. Or we could accept that it’s frequently the most enjoyable part of the meal and build something around it. That’s where the grazing boards came from.

Instead of asking everyone to commit to one corner of the menu, we wanted to put a few different sides of the Delly on the table together.

The Delly Board brings together pastrami and corned beef sliders, latkes, Mad Russian Sauce, pickles, and Cows in a Quilt.

The Usual Suspects takes our OG Philly Cheesesteak and Italian Sub, cuts them into shareable portions, and gets fries, onion rings, and Cooper Sharp Beer Cheese involved.

Then there’s Jewish. American. Princess., with nova lox, whitefish salad, bagels, cream cheese, capers, tomatoes, and latkes. Different territory, same invitation: take a little, try something, pass it over.

For someone who grew up eating this food, there’s familiarity. It is a communal meal. It’s family. For someone who’s never tried whitefish salad, there’s a chance to find out whether they like it without committing their entire lunch to the investigation. And for the person who always orders the same thing, perhaps someone at the table will finally say, “Here, just taste this.”

That’s a much more interesting introduction than a menu description.

The Flight of Fries follows the same logic, although I’m aware that giving three kinds of potatoes a title sounds like something a man with too much creative freedom might do. Classic Sea Salt, Rosemary Garlic, Old Bay. Put them in the middle and see which disappears first. We can discuss my judgment afterward.

These are made for the kind of meal that leaves room for conversation. Happy hour, a catch up with friends, the evening when nobody wants a formal dinner but everybody wants to eat something good. The boards are available for pickup and delivery, too, because the table doesn’t have to belong to us for the idea to work.

The deli is allowed to have ideas

That same curiosity has been working its way through the rest of the food.

A Reuben with kimchi might sound like an argument waiting to happen, but that interests me more than making another sandwich simply because it fits an approved picture of what deli food is supposed to look like. There has to be a reason for the combination, something happening between the richness, acidity, heat, and texture that makes you want another bite.

Otherwise, congratulations. We’ve invented a conversation piece nobody wants to finish.

Cooper Sharp Beer Cheese comes from that same appetite for finding another direction. We already love what Cooper Sharp brings to a cheesesteak. Turning it into beer cheese gives it somewhere else to go: over a hot dog or sub, onto a cheesesteak, into the path of a hand cut fry that was doing perfectly well on its own until we interfered.

The test isn’t whether the description sounds clever. It’s whether you take a bite and reach for another.

And sometimes the best change isn’t adding anything. Sometimes it’s listening when someone says, “I love the sandwich. I just don’t need that much sandwich.”

Our build your own half sandwiches belong in this conversation as much as the big boards do. So do the choices you can make with your sandwiches, subs, and cheesesteaks. You should be able to put together the meal you actually want, whether that’s a substantial lunch, a smaller sandwich, or the Girl Dinner instinct of a little salad, some fries, and absolutely no interest in defending that decision.

We’ve built a reputation around abundance. I don’t think abundance has to mean asking everyone to eat the same amount. Sometimes it means having more ways to enjoy yourself.

An excuse to stay a little longer

The Commonwealth Brewing collaboration fits here, too. A local beer alongside something you haven’t tried before can turn “let’s grab a bite” into an evening that runs a little longer than expected. That’s what I want happy hour to offer: an easy reason to get together, with something worth eating once you’re here.

A collection of available beers at Celebrity Delly. Limited time only!

And now that we offer beer to go, that experience can come home with you. A four pack, something to share, no elaborate production required.

The same thinking has crept into how we present the food. The digital menu, the photography, the slightly ridiculous movie inspired artwork...yes, some of that is because I enjoy giving a sandwich more dramatic lighting than most leading actors receive. But there’s also a practical reason. A menu should help you discover something, not simply record the thing you already knew you were going to order.

Someone who comes in for a cheesesteak might not know what else happens here at breakfast or brunch. Someone who loves our deli sandwiches might scroll past a slider, a board, or a different combination and think, “Wait. What’s that?”

That moment is the spice of life for me. Maybe it’s FOMO, but to me, discovery is the most exciting part of dining out.

We’ve even been testing new dishes, looking for that balance between a classic deli plate and something that feels right for where we’re going. It’s a small detail, until you remember that eating is full of small details. How the plate sits in front of you, whether something is easy to share, whether the food looks as inviting as it tastes. None of those things can rescue a bad meal, but they can make a good one feel considered.

Sometimes your home away from home comes home

There’s another side to all this, and it comes from knowing that some evenings, the last thing you need is another task.

You still want a proper dinner. You still want to sit down with somebody and eat something that feels cared for. You just don’t necessarily want to begin that experience by peeling potatoes after the day you’ve had.

That’s why we’ve started the monthly dinner program. The first is a brisket dinner for pickup or delivery on October 30: brisket with its gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans, designed for two to four people at $49.99. November’s dinner is being planned around Thanksgiving.

There’s nothing particularly mysterious about the first menu. That’s part of its appeal. Familiar food, a complete dinner, and a little less work between you and sitting down together.

I’ve written plenty about what we miss when we stop going out. But I’m not about to tell somebody that their evening at home doesn’t count. Sometimes the people you want to see are already there. Sometimes comfort is your own couch, your own table, and the relief of knowing the kitchen cleanup won’t require a second shift.

The point is to make the meal possible, wherever it happens.

We’re still making this place

Looking at all of it together, I don’t see a departure from the deli. I see us asking more of it.

Can it be where you come for the sandwich you’ve loved for years, and where your friend discovers something they’ve never eaten? Can it hold a quiet breakfast, a slightly disorderly table sharing fries, a happy hour that becomes dinner, and a meal that helps a family get everyone around their own table?

That’s the place Julie and I want to keep building.

A home away from home doesn’t become yours because somebody prints the phrase on a sign. Opening in a neighborhood isn’t the same as becoming part of it. It happens when you can arrive as you are, find food that suits the day you’re having, and feel that somebody is glad you came. You can be adventurous, order the usual, show up in sweats, or spend a perfectly respectable amount of time arguing over who finished the onion rings.

Here, you’re the celebrity. The food, the room, the choices, all the things we keep tinkering with should help you feel that. Otherwise, we’re just keeping ourselves busy.

In Food Is Memory, we talked about the people we carry with us through the things we eat. I still believe every word of that. But I’ve been thinking about the other side of it lately: the meals that haven’t happened yet, with the people who are sitting across from us now.

You don’t know which ordinary evening will become a story you tell later. Nobody announces it when the plates arrive.