Meet Mikey & Mel’s, D.C.’s Hefty New Delicatessen | Eater DC
"A new downtown D.C. Jewish-style deli founded by two brothers from Cleveland, co-founders Harley and Aaron Magden, brings old-school, NY-style delicatessen traditions to the capital and builds on a four-year-old original in Howard County, Maryland. The brothers named the deli in honor of their father, Mikey, and grandfather, Mel, and after selling their company Window Nation they treated this as a passion project to keep the family patriarchs' spirit alive; as Harley Magden tells Eater, “We saw a huge void of NY-style delis here. We said, ‘fuck it, let’s just open our own place,’” and he admits “we had no idea how to run a deli.” The growing menu is massive and specific: breakfast hash plates, smoked fish platters, stacked pastrami sandwiches, matzo ball soup, a serve-yourself pickle bar, egg sandwiches built on fresh bagels boiled and baked on-site daily, fluffy omelets, Benedicts, latkes, a “from the griddle” section full of pancakes, waffles, and challah French toast — and corned beef, brisket, roast beef, turkey, and pastrami are cured in-house. A deli counter up front sells sliced meats by the pound along with smoked fish, cheese, salads, and sweets like rugelach, homemade cakes, and pastries, and the restaurant operates seven days a week for all-day breakfast and lunch (weekdays 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.; weekends 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.). The long list of overstuffed sandwiches, available in quarter- or three-quarter-pound sizes, spotlights creamy whitefish salad, chopped liver, and kosher salami — “a lot of the items you would find if you went to a real NY deli,” he says — and keeps staple cream soda Dr. Brown’s on offer. There are 18 specialty sandwiches named after Jewish celebrities (Larry David, Spielberg, Seinfeld), including the showstopper “Beast‑ie Boy” ($49.50), which features a whopping two pounds of meat — corned beef, pastrami, roast beef, off-the-bone turkey — plus Swiss, Muenster, coleslaw, and four pieces of rye. The brothers invested over $2 million in the D.C. rebuild because, as Harley says, “we [knew we] needed to get on the map in a big city, not just a suburb,” and they wanted it to be recognizable as a NY-style deli: “We wanted it to look and feel like a NY-style deli like we have in Maryland.” With a goal of introducing younger D.C. workers and residents to food they may not have grown up with and citing iconic 1930s-era institutions like LA’s Canter’s and NYC’s Carnegie as inspiration, the shop quietly debuted last week and moved some 300 bagel sandwiches on its first day. The menu is currently only about a third live, with hamburgers, salads, soups, and more slated to arrive soon." - Tierney Plumb
