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Deli Development and Bagel Boom:
Area Jewish Restaurants Expand
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
D iners in the Greater Philadelphia
area are hungry for more of their
favorite Ashkenazi comfort foods,
evidenced by the growth of multiple
Jewish-owned and Jewish-style food
establishments. Last month, Russ Cowan, owner
of Famous 4th Street Deli in Queen
Village, signed a lease for the space
that formerly housed Cherry Hill, New
Jersey’s Short Hills Restaurant & Deli
in Short Hills Shopping Center. He
plans to open a new deli, Radin’s, there
in 2023.

On Dec. 9, Kismet Bagels opened its
second brick-and-mortar location in
Rittenhouse Square at 1700 Sansom St.,
only eight months after the opening of
a first permanent location in Fishtown.

Owners Jacob and Alexandra Cohen
will debut a bialy stall in Reading
Terminal Market in January.

Spread Bagelry, the Philadelphia-
based Montreal-style bagel purveyors,
opened a Cherry Hill store on Dec. 5 in
Commerce Square.

Cowan, a fourth-generation deli vet-
eran from Brooklyn, will stock the menu
at Radin’s — named after his grandfa-
ther’s family name Smoradinsky —
with reliable favorites from Famous 4th
and the several other delis he’s owned
and later sold in various locations in
Center City and Cherry Hill, including
the Kibitz Room, Pastrami & Things
and Bread & Bagel.

Radin’s, within walking distance of
Cowan’s home, offers convenience for
the 67-year-old owner.

“I’m not the guy that’s looking to retire,
but I’m looking to make my life a little bit
easier by having something around the
corner from my house,” he said.

Cowan recently put Famous 4th
Street on the market but doesn’t have
plans to close the deli.

Michael Kaplan, son of Short Hills
Restaurant & Deli owner Jerry Kaplan,
said that the Short Hills establishment
had to shutter in November 2021 due
to the continued financial impact of the
pandemic. 6
Famous 4th Street Deli owner Russ Cowan signed a lease in November to the now-shuttered Short Hills Restaurant & Deli in Cherry
Hill, New Jersey.

Photo by Sasha Rogelberg
“We were just doing takeout only
for almost three years,” Kaplan said.

“We were doing substantial business,
but at that location, expenses are way
too high.”
Kaplan opened Short Hills 2 Go
Catering in Marlton in August. The
space’s smaller 20-seat dining area
and regular customer base have helped
buoy the restaurant.

Classic Cake Co., which operates out
of the former Short Hills Restaurant
& Deli space, will move to a different
location in the Short Hills Shopping
Center. Cowan said that a good deli should
rely on the quality of its products,
a strategy to which Cowan partially
attributes his success.

“I tend to keep things very tradi-
tional: I pickle my own corned beef;
DECEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
I smoke my own pastrami; we do our
own baking, and I try to keep things
as I remember it as I grew up with,”
he said.

While Cowan sticks with old favor-
ites, Kismet Bagels has experienced
success reinventing the classics, the
Cohen couple said.

“Once people that own these shops
started exploring and trying different
concoctions and flavors and not lim-
iting themselves to only what they’ve
at a New York deli or New York bagel
shop, you see the response from cus-
tomers, who are so eager for new
specials and new things and familiar
flavors on a different setting, in a dif-
ferent vessel,” Jacob Cohen said. “All
bets are off now.”
Kismet Bagels pairs bagels with
unconventional schmears, such as
pickle and spicy everything cream
cheeses. Spread Bagelry also has found suc-
cess in a new take on bagels, baking the
bread in a wood-fired oven and serving
unique flavors such as blueberry-lemon
bagels and apple brown butter schmear.

The Cherry Hill store will be its ninth
location and first in New Jersey.

For the past year-and-a-half, the
Cohens have experimented with bialys,
a hole-less baked counterpart to their
boiled-then-baked bagel cousins. In
October, Kismet hosted a pop-up with
Mike’s BBQ in South Philadelphia,
slinging burnt end bialys. They’ve also
hosted pop-ups alongside Amanda
Shulman’s Her Place Supper Club and
Pat’s King of Steaks, serving French
onion soup and cheesesteak bialys,
respectively.




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Kismet Bagels owners Jacob and Alexandra Cohen opened up their second brick-and-
mortar location in Center City eight months after their Fishtown shop opened in April.

Photo by Mike Prince
While Kismet’s Center City loca-
tion will continue to operate in the
same model as their Fishtown store,
with both locations sourcing bagels
from Kismet’s commissary kitchen, the
bialy stall will feature a more nimble
menu, with bialys being made on-site.

Customers will be able to watch their
bialys being made behind the counter.

Kismet’s creative menu gathered a
following after the Cohens began sell-
ing bagels in a commissary kitchen
in Fishtown in May 2020. After nine
months of running a Sunday pop-up on
Frankford Avenue, the couple opened
up their first brick-and-mortar store on
113 E. Girard Ave. in April.

While the permanent Fishtown shop
stuck to Kismet’s roots, the Center
City shop shows the business’ desire to
expand its reach. Kismet has operated
a stand at the Rittenhouse Farmers’
Market for the past year.

“Fishtown is like the newest, cool-
est neighborhood in Philadelphia, and
then Rittenhouse Square is just such an
institutional phenomenon,” Alexandra
Cohen said. “The area is just such a
famous location and just made the
most sense.” JE
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