Mensch’s Deli and Lefty’s Righteous Bagels both opened their doors in Evanston this July, providing two much-needed spots for bagels in the area.
Mensch’s was opened by co-owners Jack DeMar, Kiki Eliopoulos and Eric Kogan, who wanted to bring a Jewish-style deli to Evanston amidst what they saw as a lack of traditional diners in the area. The trio visited New York’s oldest and most well-established delis for inspiration, taking recipe and decor hints from stores like Barney Greengrass and Zabar’s. In DeMar’s words, they wanted to make the restaurant feel like “somewhere [you] might have gone as a kid,” adding family photos and old-school tiles to the walls.
While Mensch’s bagels are outsourced, many of their more traditional recipes – such as those for latkes and matzo ball soup – come from DeMar’s father, who ran a decades-old diner in downtown Chicago until 2019. DeMar also said that these recipes are the most popular.
“Those are the things we are the most proud of,” he said. “People know what to order.”
For the near future, DeMar said to expect an addition of sweet and sour cabbage soup to the menu, as well as egg salad and a patty melt.
Lefty’s Righteous Bagels is very much the opposite of a New York deli, specializing in Montreal-style bagels. Unlike New York-style bagels, Montreal-style bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven and boiled in honey water, giving them a crispier crust and a slightly sweeter taste. Lefty’s deviates from Montreal-style bagels in that they are proofed in a cooler overnight to slow the rising process, resulting in a shape closer to that of a New York bagel. Owner Brad Nadborne estimated that Lefty’s sells a little over a hundred sandwiches per day.
“That was the big riddle, having never owned a bagel shop before, how many bagels we would need. The soft opening helped us a little bit,” he said. “Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays we’re selling about 400 bagels a day. Friday’s its own animal, closer to 500-600 bagels. And then on a given Saturday or Sunday we’ll sell about 800 bagels per day.”
Lefty’s specialty sandwiches are named for left-handed celebrities. For instance, the "Eggie Vedder," named after the lead singer of rock band Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, is a take on an egg and cheese with spiced mayonnaise and arugula. It’s also Lefty’s most popular sandwich.
While Evanston is experiencing its own Bagelssaince, there are several other Jewish delis with deep roots in surrounding neighborhoods. In the mid-20th century, Skokie’s population was estimated at 58% Jewish, and the suburb held the highest Holocaust survivor population per capita in the country. This fact is reflected in the longstanding storefronts of two traditional bagel spots in the area: New York Bagel and Bialy and Kaufman’s Deli.
New York Bagel and Bialy has two locations: one in Lincolnwood, opened in 1965, and one in Skokie, opened just a year later. The five original partners all hailed from New York, hoping to bring the classic New York bagel store to the Midwest. Bialys – which differ from bagels in that they are not boiled, and contain a depression rather than a full hole in the middle – were usually sold separately in the ’60s. Current co-owner Lili Cohen says that combining the two Jewish staples into one store is what distinguished them from traditional New York establishments.
Also noteworthy is the store’s Mish-Mosh bagels, their take on an everything bagel. The name came from Cohen’s late husband, derived from the Yiddish term for mixture – Mishmash. Though Cohen does not consider New York Bagel and Bialy a true Jewish deli, describing their customer base as a “very mixed clientele,” there is a sense of old charm that can only come from a store whose first bagels were sold at seven cents each.
“The customers are wonderful, the employees are great. Some of our employees have been here 30 years or more,” Cohen said.
Kaufman’s was opened by Maury Kaufman, a Holocaust survivor, in 1963, and purchased by the Dworkin family in the mid-1980s. The deli served as a hub for survivors in the area in the ’60s, and has since survived a salmonella outbreak, labor strikes and a major fire.
The new storefront, slightly modernized in the aftermath of the fire, is just a bus ride away from Evanston on the Pulse Dempster Line. Kaufman’s closed their wholesale facility in the mid-2000s, meaning that most of their products are made in-house. The store's back area is a maze of counters, baking racks and cooks making everything from soups to pastries to smoked fish.
While its bagels are distinctive in their own right, perhaps the most unique thing about Kaufman’s is its continual emphasis on community. Current owner Bette Dworkin still sees Kaufman’s as a Jewish deli at its core, and an institution that is built on community.
“A lot of my staff knows customers by name, and a lot of the customers know staff by name,” she said. “If you walk in here on any given day, behind the counter you can speak English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Persian, Dari, [or] French. To me that’s also what this is all about.”