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Only a week after his prized pastrami shop Delirama shuttered earlier this year, owner Cash Caris was ready to get back in the saddle.
The two years leading up to this moment had been tumultuous to say the least. He’d poured his heart and soul into his brick-and-mortar pastrami shop, Delirama — the logical thing to do following the wild success of its pop-up predecessor, Pyro’s Pastrami. After famous foodies including Omar Mamoon, J. Kenji López-Alt and a Vice Munchies film crew sang the pastrami’s praises online, his new deli on Solano Avenue became an instant hit.
“In our first two months, we made roughly $140,000 in revenue on sandwiches. That’s how much anticipation there was,” Caris said.
Olfactory Brewing Taproom & Delirama Jr.
2055 Center St., Suite D,
Berkeley; olfactorybrewing.com/; instagram.com/delirama_jr/
Hours: Sunday to Monday and Wednesday to Friday, noon to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; closed Tuesdays
But behind the scenes, Caris and his partner Anahita Cann were struggling to keep the deli afloat. Brining meat and baking the rye and bagels himself, Caris was working 16-plus-hour days, typically seven days a week. To add insult to injury, the building’s landlord had provided the couple with a walk-in that turned out to be a rewired freezer. When it blew three months into their lease, they drained $25,000 from their bank account to replace it.
A few months later, a power outage spoiled 2,000 pounds of pastrami in the walk-in, and Caris knew it was time to pull the plug.
“I think I needed to be cleansed of all of that,” he said. “I felt like I was released of this ball and chain, and I could just be free to do whatever I wanted.”
That’s exactly what he did. The next week, Caris called up his friend Phil Emerson, a long time Delirama patron and an owner of Olfactory Brewing.
“I asked him, hey, do you mind if I pop up in your space? We had previously discussed the possibility of me coming on and taking over the food program,” Caris said. “We both decided that we wouldn’t commit to anything long-term, we’d try it out for a month. But it went so well in the first few weeks, so we said: let’s just do this.”
With that, Delirama Jr. was born.
Cross-pollination creates something ‘magic’
Delirama Jr. and Olfactory made their partnership official to the public on Oct. 4, announcing on Instagram that Caris’ residency would continue for the foreseeable future at the Berkeley taproom.
With a pared-down business strategy and a new space, Caris feels Delirama Jr. is giving him a chance to breathe again. If Delirama Jr. had a personality, he said, it would be “calm, cool and collected.” He also wants to make clear that Delirama Jr. isn’t just a revival of the old deli — it’s an entirely new chapter for his brand.
“What I did [at Delirama] was great and everybody loved it. And if you got to have it, then you were one of the lucky few. But Delirama Jr. is a concept that is going to be different; it’s a micro deli, essentially,” Caris said.
At Delirama Jr., delegation has helped Caris keep his overhead costs and stress levels low. He’s now sourcing fresh bread from local bakeries instead of making it from scratch. Caris was brining his own briskets in the Solano space, but he’s since outsourced that task to Weber Quality Meats in San Leandro. (He still smokes and steams the briskets himself.) Delirama Jr. offers a house-made potato salad like Delirama did, but folks shouldn’t go in expecting a copy-paste of the old menu. For example, you’ll now find pastrami tacos and a $7 pizza in the lineup, an item that’s been popular among Berkeley High students.
“I had to make mistakes at Delirama in order to say, okay, now my brain is going to find the path of least resistance, and that’s how you make a concept sustainable. That’s how you make it profitable,” Caris said.
Though the business strategy is new, the sandwich quality is still the same. The rye is toasted in butter and pastrami fat, which, according to Caris, makes it a bonafide Delirama-brand sandwich. Plus, now there’s beer to pair it with.
“There’s something kind of magic about drinking a beer and eating a pastrami sandwich,” Emerson said. He calls the partnership a cross-pollination: as pastrami sales go up, beer sales do, too.
“I think a lot of our customers love what he’s making. Folks come in specifically looking for a sandwich and then try our beer and go, ‘Wow, we love your beer, too. You know, I’ll have two beers while I eat this sandwich,’” he said.
Olfactory is celebrating its second anniversary in its Dogpatch location, but the Berkeley taproom only opened its doors in May of this year. The space is broad and minimalist, with black and gray concrete walls reminiscent of a well-lit industrial warehouse, and there’s plenty of high-top seating, tables and spots at the bar. You’ll find several light beers like lagers and hefeweizens on tap, as well as darker, malt-driven explorations, like the house favorite The Lamp Industry Is Booming During These Dark Days black lager. (Ask Emerson about the name’s origin story next time you’re at the bar.)
Olfactory focuses on low-ABV beers brewed with malts from Alameda’s Admiral Maltings, California’s only certified organic malting operation. Bartender Gideon Bush recommended pairing the Dad’s Mustard sandwich — six ounces of pastrami plus mustard on rye — with the Stepside American Lager, a crisp, full-bodied 3.9% ABV beer brewed with malted corn, as well as the pastrami pizza with any of the sour beers on rotation.
With a lightened load, Caris can now turn his eyes towards goals for expanding the brand to other locations in Northern California, nationwide and potentially abroad.
“I’ve always had big dreams with this brand, and I know that I can do it,” he said. “But it took me going through all of that with Delirama to get to this point.”
For now, the struggle seems to have rewarded him. To speak of the sandwich: this author risked letting her meter run out to stay and enjoy the Dad’s Mustard. There’s not much else out there worth getting fined for by the Berkeley parking police.
