‘In house’ is name of the game at deli
Kris Jakob and crew are curing their own meats and baking their own bread at 1895 Deli, inside the chef’s Brasserie 1895 in Friendswood.
The world of Houston sandwiches just got more interesting with the opening of chef Kris Jakob’s 1895 Deli. The new takeout and delivery spot is inside his hit Friendswood restaurant, Brasserie 1895.
Diners who remember Jakob’s charcuterie talents from his days at Kris Bistro, the restaurant of the Culinary Institute LeNôtre, will be happy to find his cured and smoked meats in everything from an exuberant take on a muffuletta to an eccentric variant on the banh mi. These are great big sandwiches with great big attitude, and Jakob has the flavor sense to pull them off.
The menu of eight sandwiches, a half dozen species of deviled eggs and a trio of soups is available at a window at the end of the kitchen pass-through to the restaurant dining room. Jakob is thinking of the venture as a sort of incubator for what he hopes will be a full-fledged deli down the road.
Everything from the meats to the condiments to the breads is made in-house. Jakob and his crew are experimenting with house-baked loaves — including baguettes, rye and focaccia — as well as smoking ham, curing various salumi and roasting pork and turkey. The latter is given a graceful brine treatment, so that the meat emerges juicy and only lightly salted.
The Italian-American focaccia sandwich is a $12 meat festival stacked wayhigh with spicy soppressata, capocollo and ham, all of it cured in-house. Provolone, a zippy pepper relish and just enough garlicky olive salad put the New Orleans swagger in its step.
A 10-buck banh mi gets an electric Calabrian ’nduja spread in place of pâté. Its roasted pork and ham layered with pickled vegetables and jalapeño are bound up with a green-curry mayo that works surprisingly well.
You can argue about whether this sandwich is a banh mi all you want. What you can’t dispute is that it is curiously terrific.
Same goes for a “pambazo” riff involving chicken grilled with red mole, refried beans, vegetables in tart escabeche and lime cabbage slaw. Cotija cheese crumbles sneak in there, too, and the bread is painted with spicy red sauce instead of soaked in more traditional fashion. You’ll think you can’t finish it until boom, it’s all gone.
That’s the wilder stuff. More classic pastrami, ham and cheese and Cuban sandwiches are available, along with a turkey club kicked up with housecured bacon and soused cranberries.
Vegetarian? There’s buffalo mozzarella with house-made peperonata and oven-roasted tomato on focaccia for you.
The breads are respectable and seem to be serious works in progress. In fact, Jakob has kicked the wood-fired pizza off his dining-room menu in order to devote the oven solely to bread loaves.
It’s all very promising. Sandwich buffs will want to make a field trip down to Friendswood to check it out. As to people who live nearby and will be eligible for delivery when it becomes available in a month, well, I envy you.