Stopsky’s Deli Opens on Mercer Island with Prize Winning Chef

There is a big buzz on Mercer Island, and even off the Island, as Stopsky’s Delicatessen prepares to open it’s doors.  Located right next to Island Books, which has been a central gathering place for most of it’s 30 years open, and boasting a celebrity chef and dedicated crew (the lynchpin who will oversee the kitchen and front of house is chef Robin Levanthal, who owned and cooked at Crave Restaurant, a highly acclaimed Capitol Hill venue.  He was the chief instructor of the New England Culinary Institute (even I have heard of that!) and a contestant on the Season 6 Top Chef.

The bread maven who founded the Columbia City Bakery (when I was in Sunset Hill’s Green Market the other day they were telling me with considerable pride that they featured Columbia City Bakery bread, it is

really highly prized here in Seattle), by name Andrew Meltzer, is overseeing the bread. And owners Jeff and Lara Sanderson are realizing a goal not only for themselves but for the community as they “celebrate family, heritage and community through food.”  Jeff named the Deli for his father and uncles who came to the US from Kiev in 1905 (my own father arrived on Ellis Island in 1915, from Minsk).  Their names were changed to Sanderson to Americanize the family and move on with pursuing the American Dream.  Now that the American Dream has come full circle to honor each individaul culture and past, the reclaiming of the name, as well as the Heritage Wall in the Deli, rings in a celebration that will be ongoing, as Mercer Island is celebrating the new arrival and waiting with great anticipation for the doors to open.

As am I!  As soon as the music from the opening day has faded away, I am going, with as many of my friends as will fit in my car.  I have to admit that as a middle school student in San Francisco, when I used to take the cable car down to Union Square and go to the ACT (American Conservatory Theater)’s children’s theater school, I would stop off at Solomon’s or David’s, the two competing Jewish Delicatessans on Geary Street.  The bagels, the borscht, the matzoh ball soup, the really really really really good pastrami on an onion roll, the blintzs, never mind, I am going to go live in my car in front of Island Books and Stopsky’s Deli.  You know where to find me, and don’t worry as I have a car charger for my cell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an interesting side note, you might like to check out Sanderson Ventures, a new funding source that backs businesses that are doing some good in the community.