Delis are hardwired into the Jewish American experience.
They're the all-day diners where the corned beef sandwiches are the size of your face; the old-school eateries where bagels and lox aren’t just a breakfast food; the buzzing gathering place for having matzo ball soup and golden latkes nowhere near the holidays with which they’re associated.
On the East Coast and in L.A., delis are so ubiquitous that a child’s first pastrami on rye is almost a rite of passage. But not in the Bay Area, and especially not in San Francisco.
Other than Saul’s Restaurant and Delicatessen in Berkeley and Max’s in Burlingame, the city was virtually a deli-free wasteland until Wise Sons opened their first brick-and-mortar in 2012. Even now that they have five locations in San Francisco, the Jewish American deli still feels underrepresented in a place with a population of almost a million.
The illuminated menu board and bar at Super Mensch(Angela DeCenzo)
With its illuminated menu board, counter-inspired seating, and illustrations of legendary delis lining its walls, the pocket-sized Super Mensch is a direct descendant of those East Coast-style institutions. But its hand-built wooden booths, cocktail bar, and the Jewish-influenced films and shows projected on the walls (a nod to the building’s early days as the Presidio Theater, as well as the deli’s link to the culture of stage and screen) are evidence it’s as much a champion of its SF upbringing as it is its heritage.
The menu too, is a seamless combination of traditional deli favorites with Northern California culinary prowess. There are enormous sandwiches and chewy bagels heaped with lox, of course, but the pickles on the side are lacto-fermented, and all the bread is baked in-house. There’s chopped liver on rye, but it comes with the kind of celeriac-sumac relish only a chef could devise.
That chef is Adam Rosenblum, an East Coast transplant with fond memories of Ashkenazi food traditions both at the deli and around the family dining table. One of the owners of Causwells (2346 Chestnut St., Marina), Rosenblum, and co-owner, cocktail wizard Elmer Mejicanos, began testing out the goods as a pop-up at their former rotating take-out concept, Little Red Window in North Beach, in 2022. Now, as a brick-and-mortar, Super Mensch brings them full circle back to Chestnut Street, just a couple doors down from their original American bistro.
Housemade pastrami on housemade rye at Super Mensch(Angela DeCenzo)
Rosenblum slides into the booth to say hello over a table piled with food: wedges of za’atar flatbread with a rainbow of hearty dips—toothsome hummus, zingy herbed schug (zhug), and gently sweet honey bell pepper; cubes of watermelon and feta topped with a sort of olive tapenade made with everything bagel crunch; that aforementioned bagel, schmeared with a thick layer of scallion cream cheese and topped with cold-smoked salmon, red onion, capers, and dill; creamy potato salad crowned with Caviar Co.’s wild salmon roe.
Because this kitchen, like Super Mensch itself, is tiny, he’s spent the day at the Treasure Island commissary kitchen, in which they prepare some of the deli’s ingredients. Perhaps the most important is the two-week cured and smoked pastrami he’s perfected over the last decade. A complicated dance of seasoning, dehydrating, and smoking thinly sliced beets produces the restaurant’s vegetarian version he says is almost as meaty as the real thing.
Rosenblum looks at one of the cocktails we’ve just ordered, the Cel-Ray—a spring-green combination of tequila, cold-pressed celeriac, celery hearts, cucumber, apple, and Meyer lemon reminiscent of (and named for) Dr. Brown’s famous celery soda. “That’s my favorite,” he says of the creation by Mejicanos.
For me, it’s the matzah ball soup margarita—a concoction of tequila, carrot tops, dill pollen, nori aperitif, and orange liqueur, in which floats a dumpling-shaped, parsley-filled ice cube that somehow turns a comforting classic into an astonishing savory cocktail. It’s one of several drinks by Mejicanos with a similar kind of Jewish American inspiration: a babka old fashioned, an egg cream made with gin and cacao liqueur, a dirty pickle martini made with the brine from the housemade pickles.
Noshes at Super Mensch including latkes (top left), watermelon feta salad (middle), potato salad (bottom middle), and dips (Angela DeCenzo)
When the latkes arrive—gleaming cakes of fried potatoes and onions served with crème fraîche, apple butter, chive, and wild salmon roe—Rosenblum takes his leave. It’s not a moment too soon. Dense with crispy edges, they’re so much better than the ones my own mom used to make while still nostalgic enough to taste like home.
Choosing a dessert from the cases filled with sky-high cheesecakes and chocolate-topped eclairs is an essential part of the old-school deli experience. Super Mensch doesn’t have the space for that kind of thing, but they weren’t about to leave cake out of the equation. The foot-tall confection (#40 on 7x7’s 2025 Big Eat) sits on a stand at the kitchen counter, dripping chocolate buttercream and ganache over its devil’s-food-cake center.
A single slice is so big, finishing it after a meal would require the whole restaurant chanting, “You can do it!” a la Matilda cheering on her gluttonous classmate Brucie in the Roald Dahl classic. Though it’s not too sweet and not too cakey, we can’t “do it,” but thanks to a to-go box, we will later—no encouragement needed.
// Super Mensch is open Tuesday through Thursday from 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm, Friday from 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm, Saturday from 10am to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm, and Sunday from 10am to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm; 2336 Chestnut St. (Marina), supermeschsf.com
The giant chocolate cake slice at Super Mensch landed on 7x7's Big Eat list for 2025.(Angela DeCenzo)
