Wise Sons Deli open at Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco

Wise Sons Deli’s new location at the Contemporary Jewish Museum opened for business on Friday, July 26.

Admission to museum will not be required to dine at the restaurant. Here is the menu: Contemporary Jewish Museum menu.

The hours for takeaway and outdoor plaza seating are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The cafe inside in the museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and from 1-4 p.m. on Thursday. The museum is closed every Wednesday.

The museum’s third café since it opened in 2008 has seating for 25 to 30 inside, plus another 12 to 16 on the plaza. Diners can eat inside, or order from the takeaway window and either take their food away or dine on the plaza.

Owners Leo Beckerman and Evan Bloom have implementing a menu that’s a bit different than their location on 24th Street, which has been open since February 2012. The museum menu is sandwich-laden, and also includes two salads (“Country Club Cobb” and “Chinese Chicken Salad”). Some of the sandwich choices are: hot pastrami, hot corned beef, organic smoked turkey, roast brisket, a smoked mushroom reuben, chopped liver on rye, egg salad, smoked trout, and smoked salmon on a bialy. Matzo ball soup “probably not as good as your bubbie’s” is $7 with $1.50 extra for challah or rye toast.

Patrons order at a counter, then get a number and wait for their food to be brought out to them. The line for ordering is along the front window of the cafe, which is located on the ground level of the museum, on the east side.

“Unlike the previous cafes at the museum, all of the food will be prepared fresh, right there, in the dining room, in an open kitchen,” Bloom said. “People will be able to see their sandwich being made.”

Wise Sons at the CJM is open every day. Coffee is provided by De La Paz.

 

Andy Altman-Ohr

Andy Altman-Ohr was J.’s managing editor and Hardly Strictly Bagels columnist until he retired in 2016 to travel and live abroad. He and his wife have a home base in Mexico, where he continues his dalliance with Jewish journalism.