When the line outside your door is 45 minutes long, less than a month into your restaurant opening, that's a pretty good sign that you are doing something--most likely, a lot of somethings--right.
Jack DeMar, Kiki Eliopoulos and Eric Kogan grew up together in Wilmette. When they reconnected several years ago, they realized they all shared a common passion about the food service industry, and a dream to one day open a restaurant together.
That dream became a reality over the summer, when they opened the only Ashkenazi style Jewish delicatessen in Evanston, aptly and purposefully named: Mensch's.
DeMar grew up in the restaurant business; his family owned the Oak Tree Restaurant in Chicago for over 40 years. "I always knew that I wanted to go into the restaurant business," he said. Prior to opening Mensch's, he had opened two other restaurants.
True to their devotion to authenticity, the three of them traveled to New York, on a sort of deli fact-finding mission, visiting more than a dozen classic New York delis over several days.
"Even more than the food, which was incredible, I think we also came away with this feeling that you get when you're eating at these places," DeMar said. "They're so lived-in, and you can feel the history, and you get a sense of the people who are making your food and taking your orders having been there forever. And they just sort of have their own community built around the restaurant. That is something we are really striving for."
"And we're already seeing that sort of forming," he continued. "Obviously, it's the very early days. But it is great to see your customers, and see people bringing their parents, and seeing people's eyes light up, and the smile on their face when a cup of soup reminds them of something they used to have as kids. It's just really gratifying to see that."
Everything, except the bagels, the bread, and the lox, are prepared in-house. "The pastrami is brined for 10 days and smoked in our kitchen," Kogan said. "The corned beef is brined for 10 days and braised. All the fish that we serve, other than the lox, is smoked cold, or smoked hot and cured in-house. There's a lot of effort, and a lot of passion, that goes into the food, and I think it comes out in the flavor."
The third part of their trio is Kiki Eliopoulos, who is engaged to DeMar. Eliopoulos is a baker; she spent months researching and perfecting traditional Jewish baked goods, like babkas and rugelach, big hits at the restaurant.
When asked how they came up with the name, DeMar was quick to say that mensch is "one of my favorite Yiddish words. It just seemed like a fun, good name. And I think we are all striving to be mensches in our own right."
Rochelle Newman Rubinoff is a freelance writer living in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
