Home Delivery for the Holidays
Mile End’s Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich Kit. Photograph courtesy of FoodyDirect.
Back in March, the Forward reported that Houston deli extraordinaire Kenny & Ziggy’s had started shipping a Seder in a Box as part of its haimish offerings on specialty-food site FoodyDirect.
Now, FoodyDirect’s Jewish quotient is getting upped again. Brooklyn’s own Mile End Deli has launched a meaty presence on the site, shipping kits and platters themed around its massively popular Montreal-inspired menu. The perfect no-hassle way to break the fast, perhaps?
For $99 — plus shipping of $10-$30, depending on your location — you can fress on a Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich kit that includes two pounds of Mile End’s luscious dry-cured and house-smoked smoked meat, a half loaf of sliced rye, eight ounces of deli mustard and a quart of McClure’s whole garlic-dill pickles.
Components of Mile End’s “Ruth Wilensky” sandwich — inspired by (and named for) the “Wilensky Special” from Montreal’s Wilensky’s Light Lunch — come in an $89 Ruth Wilensky Beef Salami Sandwich Kit, which serves eight. Two pounds of beef salami, eight onion rolls, mustard and more of those pickles allow the intrepid and deli-deprived to “recreate these awesome sandwiches at home.”
Well, almost. “We’re going to give people a pretty accurate representation of what we do,” said Noah Bernamoff, who founded and runs Mile End with his wife Rae. “Even though it’s a great experience to come into the deli and get your meat hand-sliced, we’re not going to hand-slice the smoked meat we ship. But people buying through mail order probably can’t get to Mile End in the first place.” Mile End’s priciest online offering: A five-pound smoked-meat brisket for $199, sans accompaniments.
“Shipping was part of our plan for Mile End from Day One,” Bernamoff said. “But when Sandy happened, we lost the infrastructure that would have allowed it. When FoodyDirect came around, we figured it was a happy medium with what we’d originally wanted to do.”
Bernamoff’s Brooklyn-born deli empire now includes two restaurants, a central kitchen in Red Hook for catering and online orders, and a newly minted bagel emporium, Black Seed, with locations around Manhattan.
Now, Bernamoff is eyeing the wholesale business. “Next for Mile End will be a USDA-inspected facility that’ll put us into wholesale country,” he said. “And a huge leap into store products.”
Michael Kaminer is a frequent contributor to the Forward.
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