Meshugganah, the Jewish deli concept from chef Rob Clement, is looking for a new space. Meshugganah initially signed a lease to open in The Shop, a mixed-use space on Graham Street. However, as the pandemic lengthened the time it would take for the restaurant to open, remaining in the space became more difficult. 

“The timing wasn’t going to work out,” he says. “The people at The Shop were great; they were working with us on everything, including us deciding not to do it. Unfortunately, our original timeline was the fall. At this point we were looking at maybe the spring, and it just had gotten to the point where the project didn’t make sense anymore for myself, for my family, and we just needed to regroup and go in another direction.”

While Clement admits some of the delays were preventable, others were out of his control, such as the amount of time equipment would take to arrive and the backlog of the permitting processes. As the timeline continued getting pushed back, Clement feared the added expenses he’d be taking on due to the delays would take away from what he could provide his staff, a non-negotiable for him.

“I think it’s okay to take a step back and say, like, this isn’t the right fit anymore, because at the time when we signed the lease, I fully believed that it was the best place for us to go at that time,” he says. “I think the world has changed a lot in six months, seven months.”

Clement is already reimagining what Meshugganah will look like when it graduates from a pop-up, as well as focusing on catering to the Jewish community for gatherings like holidays and Bar or Bat Mitzvahs. The Jewish deli will still open as a brick-and-mortar. Despite the financial hit the business has taken to get out of the current lease, Clement sees some positives to the situation. By putting the brick-and-mortar on pause, he’s found the time to reimagine the style of service to meld fine dining touches with a Jewish deli atmosphere. That was time he didn’t have before thanks to the rush of press — and the pressure it put on him.

“I think we became a good story in a time where there weren’t a lot of good stories, and I think it made things feel like they had to move faster than they needed to,” he says. “When we open, I want to make it clear to the people who work with us there’s no reason to take shortcuts because you feel pressure that things have to go faster. And that’s a big part of this whole thing: there were going to have to be shortcuts taken to do this in the timeline we needed to do this. And I’m not the type of person who wants to take shortcuts.”

Meshugganah was named a finalist in The UPPY’s Pop-up of the Year category. The next pop-up will be a breakfast one, with pastrami and eggs and smoked fish toast at Verdant Bread on Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 10 a.m.

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