‘The food is blessed’: At Worcester’s only Jewish deli, you can enjoy fries covered in pastrami

The “Cry Me a Liver.” The “Newton Ave.” The “Double Trouble.” And, as a recent holiday treat, the “Pastrami Donut.”

These word combinations are not random. In fact, that last item is not even a doughnut. Rather, it’s a pastrami sandwich with mustard, no cheese and exchanges bread for a glazed doughnut.

These are among several items on the menu at Chani’s Kosher Deli, Worcester’s only kosher deli and the last Jewish deli in the city. Operating inside the commercial kitchen at Chabad Lubavitch of Central Massachusetts, customers can pick up the usual fare typically seen at a Jewish deli — but with a twist.

The pastrami fries, “Cry Me a Liver,” and “Double Trouble” were a few of the menu items created and named by Rabbi Mendel Fogelman’s son, Leivik Fogelman. Although the rabbi serves as the executive director, the whole family helps at the restaurant.

Rabbi Fogelman’s wife, Chani, serves as co-director and namesake. He referred to the two of them as the “salt shakers” who oversee the kitchen, while another one of their sons works the cash register.

“Thank God we have 10 kids and I put everybody to work at home,” Chani Fogelman said. “So they’re all familiar with the kitchen.”

This familiarity, between identifying ingredients and cooking itself, has produced new dishes that still make use of familiar Jewish deli ingredients, she added.

The “Cry Me a Liver” is a pastrami sandwich with a “generous smear” of chopped liver, according to the menu. The “Newton Ave.” combines hot sliced brisket, coleslaw, house dressing and vegetables on a Challah bulkie roll. The “Double Trouble” is made up of pastrami and corned beef “piled higher than ever before.”

A take on the “Challah Schnitzel,” further made famous on TikTok by @bengingi, who got millions of views on his recipe based on the popular Israeli sandwich, is also offered in the restaurant.

Chani version brings together “elements of Jewish and Middle Eastern cuisines into a mouthwatering culinary creation,” the menu reads. “Tangy matbucha, creamy fried eggplant, crunchy Israeli pickles and vibrant purple cabbage salad add layers of flavor and texture that will leave you craving more.

Other common Jewish deli foods like pastrami, brisket, kugel, latkes and corned beef are available. Chinese food, specifically fire chicken poppers and sweet and spicy Chinese chicken, can be found on the menu – a common food for Jewish people around Christmas since “the Chinese restaurants are the only ones open on Christmas night,” emphasized Mendel Fogelman.

And given that the food is kosher, do not expect cheese on the Reuben sandwich, hence the item’s name: The Kosher “Reuben.”

The unique sandwich involving pastrami on doughnuts is not a regular item. Instead, it’s a Hanukkah treat.

“It is customary to eat foods with oil as the miracle of Hanukkah was the oil lasting eight days,” Rabbi Fogelman wrote in an email to MassLive. “In Israel, they eat donuts. In the United States of America, we eat potato pancakes. At Chani’s, we eat pastrami donuts!”

Another notable item is the wild pastrami fries, initially promoted on Instagram in May 2023 as “FULLY LOADED ANIMAL FRIES,” evocative of the fries on In-N-Out’s secret menu. These fries differ, exchanging American cheese for pieces of pastrami. Like many of the unique items on the menu, Leivik Fogelman said he develops an idea, with his siblings’ support and reception, before executing the creation of a new dish to be added to the menu.

“But, truthfully, the idea came from a lot of harassment [from my sisters],” he joked. “It was a big request.”

Larger order options also range from deli meats by the pound; a Shabbat menu that offers whole chickens, gefilte fish, kugel and more; and various dips from green parsley dip to baba ganoush.

“It’s a pretty wide menu, which gets pretty tough because you have to get a lot of things ready,” Rabbi Fogelman said.

Getting through Newton Square to reach Chani’s has its own challenges. Plus, customers might second guess themselves once they get there, thinking, “Am I in the right place?”

If you’ve reached the synagogue, you’re good. Head through its doors with handles resembling shofars.

The restaurant also follows a specific schedule. Anyone interested in grabbing takeout on a Friday night after work or on the weekend should think again. The deli is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays. The early closures on Fridays are so the synagogue can prepare for the Sabbath on Saturday, Rabbi Fogelman said.

“It’s a respect to God, respect to the Torah, respect to the gift of Shabbos,” he continued. “The Sabbath is a gift to us, the Jewish people. So to respect that gift, we have to prepare properly.”

Chani’s is closed on Sunday due to the temple’s Hebrew school, the rabbi added.

The deli was born out of several massive Shabbat dinners hosted at the Fogelman’s house for between 45 and 70 people prior to the pandemic, he said.

“So Chani said to me one day, ‘How about if I cook in the commercial kitchen?’” Rabbi Fogelman continued. “‘It’ll make it easier and then we bring the food home for Shabbat.‘”

Rabbi Fogelman went further with his own idea: we sell the food to cover the cost of the synagogue’s programs, including a preschool, a Hebrew school and a summer camp. This would help the temple’s mission as a religious hub for Jewish people across Central Massachusetts and to serve the Jewish community “any way we can, in any capacity,” said the rabbi.

Using the synagogue’s kitchen, Chani’s Kosher Deli was born in 2017. With a simple menu to start, people would buy chicken, soup and challah bread. But as COVID-19 prompted lockdowns across the nation in March 2020, serving food in person stopped. Noticing how nearby Worcester restaurants were responding to the once-in-a-century pandemic, he had an idea.

“[Restaurants] advertise all over this thing, curbside pickups,” he told MassLive. “Why don’t we do that? [The rest is] history.”

Business boomed from there as people picked up their takeout orders, with shoutouts on the Facebook group Worcester Eats further promoting Chani’s and its reputation, Rabbi Fogelman said.

Word of mouth reached its peak in May 2021 with an informal lunch competition run by the Worcester-based tax firm Cunningham Associates. The firm wanted to determine which local restaurant has the best food to grab to-go for lunch, Rabbi Fogelman said.

This competition was also part of a team-building effort during the socially distanced, work-from-home days of the pandemic, associate Anthony DeSimone told the Telegram & Gazette in 2022.

One day in May 2021, a suited man walked inside the synagogue, headed to the Chani’s counter and made several large orders, the rabbi said.

“I said to him, ‘How are you doing? Are you having a party? You’re ordering so many nice items,‘” he recounted. “So he says, ‘No, we’re doing a March Madness-type of bracket and we did all the restaurants in Worcester. I’m not talking about McDonald’s, I’m talking about real restaurants, and we put you guys in.‘”

After the rest of the competition on Shrewsbury Street was “decimated” by Chani’s, the deli advanced to the final four restaurants, Rabbi Fogelman said.

“‘And it’s yours to lose,” the man said before the rabbi concluded the story with, “And we won, of course.”

The deli beat other Worcester dining institutions, including George’s Coney Island and the Flying Rhino, the Boston Globe reported.

Since Chani’s came on to the food scene in 2017, other delis have come and gone. Weintraub’s, Worcester’s beloved Jewish deli, closed its doors in 2019, just shy of operating for a century. Almost exactly five years later, the New York-style Helfand’s Deli, located on Highland Street, shut down after 18 months in business.

Chani’s stays standing. Rabbi Fogelman credits the food and the menu’s popularity for the deli’s success.

“More than 50% of my customers are probably not Jewish,” he said. “I tell [people,] with a clear belief, that the reason my food tastes so good is because the purpose and the mission of the food, and selling it, is to send kids to a Jewish day camp or send kids to a Jewish school, or do the holiday festivals, and to spread Judaism out.”

“So the food is blessed, I really believe that,” Rabbi Fogelman continued. “Because there’s no other reason. What do you mean, my pastrami’s better than the other guys‘? Can’t be.”

Great care is taken with the ingredients. As well as preparing the food to be kosher, much of their food comes from out of state, Rabbi Fogelman said. Chani Fogelman herself grows the vegetables and makes food items from scratch, comparing the deli’s ingredients to “farm-to-table type food.”

“In order to keep this place supplied, we have to run to New York to get the meat, to get the chicken – schnitzel which comes from Iowa,” he said.

“We can’t just go to the store,” Chani Fogelman added.

But all the effort is worth it.

The Fogelmans said they hope their food brings happiness and sense of belonging at a time when the world seems dark and aggravating.

“It’s a very different experience,” Chani Fogelman said. “You’re not walking into a restaurant … This is more like home.”

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