When I scheduled this week’s review of Deli Divine, the latest venture from Ben Poremba, I didn’t realize the celebrated chef and restaurateur would drop 2023’s biggest dining news not two weeks before. Poremba will close his twin Botanical Heights flagships, Elaia and Olio, and their nearby sibling Nixta at year’s end and reopen them in 2024 in the burgeoning Delmar Maker District that straddles the Central West End and Academy neighborhoods.
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Restaurant relocations rarely register on the Richter scale. Over the past 11 years, Elaia, Olio and Simone Faure’s La Patisserie Chouquette have transformed the corner of Tower Grove and McRee avenues into a dining destination, home to the exceptional bread bakery, cafe and pizzeria Union Loafers and Nick Bognar’s nationally acclaimed, genre-busting sushi and Southeast Asian restaurant, Indo.
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Whether this transformation will prove to be a net-positive for Botanical Heights as a whole, I’ll let residents, urbanists and historians debate. Living nearby, I’ll keenly miss walking to Olio’s patio on a balmy evening. Then again, I couldn’t justify my annual visit to Elaia for its signature tasting menu without a restaurant critic’s expense account.
The transformation has been undeniably significant, however — more so day-to-day, I suspect, than the neighborhood’s change of name from the original McRee Town to the developer-friendly Botanical Heights. When of pandemic-shuttered restaurants on cities across the country, a photograph of Olio illustrated the article.
Poremba saw the potential for Olio in an abandoned service station. Fittingly, he has opened Deli Divine inside a much bigger swing at transformative reuse: Delmar Divine, the community-minded shared space in the former St. Luke’s Hospital in the West End neighborhood. The deli’s entrance is on the east side of the sprawling building on Delmar Boulevard, facing Belt Avenue and tucked back from a small parking lot.
If you know any of Poremba’s other restaurants, your first visit to Deli Divine will upend your expectations. This is, by far, his most casual establishment, with counter service — or, technically, counters service. For bagels, you go to one side of the counter to place your order, then take your ticket to the cashier. For sandwiches and everything else, you order directly from the cashier.
Soon, though, as you notice the throwback school cafeteria-style booths and the walls adorned with black-and-white photographs and children’s artwork, you ease into familiarity. Deli Divine showcases Poremba’s signature meticulous design. If anything, the intentional lack of frills verges on Hollywood production values. You pour your own coffee from an urn and, if you like, warm up your baked goods yourself in a microwave.
These details coalesce into Poremba’s contemporary tribute to the classic Jewish-American deli. How compelling you find that tribute will depend on your personal history. I certainly didn’t visit looking for signs of “authenticity,†that elusive, empty target. Instead, I viewed Deli Divine through Poremba’s own track record of bringing his unique voice and exceptional skills — and his keen eye for kitchen talent — to Elaia and Olio, the Mexican Nixta, the Morrocan Benevolent King and last year’s standout newcomer, the Spanish Bar Moro.
(The restaurant occupies the front half of Deli Divine’s space. The back half is a specialty market with prepared foods and dry goods. This review focuses only on the restaurant.)
At breakfast, Deli Divine is essentially a bagel shop, and I’ve included the restaurant in my ongoing coverage of ºüÀêÊÓƵ’ Year of the Bagel. In hindsight, that isn’t fair to Deli Divine. It brings in a fine boiled-and-baked bagel from a New Jersey purveyor, shiny and toothsome and well above the metro-area standard, but by design the focus here isn’t as obsessive as you will find at 2023’s other bagel newcomers (Bagel Union, Lefty’s Bagels and C&B Boiled Bagels). The selection of both bagel and schmear varieties is restrained, with six and three styles respectively, all of them straightforward.
A bagel and a schmear — everything and onion cream cheese is my preference — works best as a template for Deli Divine’s cured fish, silken hand-sliced lox or the “special reserve†Scottish lox, kissed with smoke and as luscious sashimi. Your open-faced bagel includes garnishes of tomato, onion and caper; for a significant additional cost, you can escalate your breakfast to luxe status with a half-ounce of domestic ($24.95) or Siberian ($34.95) caviar.
Bagels also sandwich Olio’s deservedly “famous†egg salad and the lovely, understated smoked-whitefish salad. I ordered the latter sandwiched between slices of Jewish rye from Deli Divine’s lunch menu. This sandwich didn’t need anything more than that smoked whitefish, and in general the lunch menu hews to a less-is-more aesthetic. The featured option is a build-your-own sandwich: choose 4 or 6 ounces of meat, deli mustard or the tangy “famous sauce†and Jewish rye or pumpernickel. (You can add a slice of cheese “if you must,†the menu cheekily allows.)
You can also “schlep†multiple meats together — say, the zippy duo of pastrami and beef salami — as a Combo (everything between two slices of bread) or Decker (the meats separated by slices of bread). Yet even these imposing creations are uncomplicated: bread, meat, mustard and/or famous sauce. If your personal preference leans toward more complex sandwiches, Deli Divine does dish a classic Reuben, with tender corned beef, pungent sauerkraut and “fancy sauce†on marble rye.
In general, Deli Divine’s traditionalist, no-fuss approach is refreshing. Would your Combo, already straining at the limits of rye bread’s tensile strength, benefit from lettuce, tomato and (perish the thought) a slice of cheese? How much more heartening could a cup of the schmaltzy matzo-ball soup be?
When the restaurant’s style wears thin, it points to Poremba’s relative inexperience with fast-casual dining. A slice of chocolate babka, from the display case at the counter, was indulgent enough but trending toward staleness. Would a zap in the provided microwave have restored the babka to peak condition? Should diners need to ask that question in a restaurant with Deli Divine’s provenance?
It reflects the broader tensions between the expectations of diners who follow Poremba’s accolades, those drawn by Deli Divine’s cuisine, and those used to counter-service convenience and affordability. It can be the difference between an experience that is truly transformative or merely transporting.
Where Deli Divine, 5501 Delmar Boulevard • More info 314-987-3354; • Menu Traditional Jewish-American deli fare, including bagels and sandwiches • Hours 8 a.m.-3 p.m. daily (market open until 6 p.m.)