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Greg Bernson didn’t know exactly how much meat he’d need to run his deli in its first week. So he prepared using his best guess: 70 pounds of brisket, 90 pounds of corned beef, and 100 or so pounds of pastrami. Nonetheless, by the end of the opening week in business, Bubbala’s Neighborhood Eatery ran out of meat.
That could have been due in part to customers like Isaac Steinberg, who not only sat down to eat the pastrami and corned beef hash with two eggs, but bought a package of pastrami to take home with him, too. The San Anselmo resident said he’s been waiting months for Bubbala’s to open for business.
To have Jewish deli not even a five-minute walk from his house is huge, Steinberg said. “I couldn’t be more excited.”
After first reading in this column in August 2023 that a Jewish deli called Bubbala’s would open in San Anselmo’s Red Hill Shopping Center, residents waited. And waited. A year and three months later, on Nov. 2, the waiting ended.
The delay was largely caused by permitting issues and the installation of the fire and alarm systems. With those problems in the rearview mirror, father-daughter owners Bernson and Janelle Loiselle are just happy they’re finally open.
I visited on a weekday during Bubbala’s first week, and there was a constant stream of customers coming into the small counter-service restaurant, especially when it was lunch hour at the nearby high school. Bernson cautioned the students that if they wanted anything other than the day’s special of chicken schnitzel and fries, the wait would probably exceed their lunch break.
Bubbala’s started as a pop-up in September 2022, and back then Bernson told me he had no intention of turning the business into a restaurant. Operating out of a rental space at Magnolia Park Kitchen in San Rafael, the no-frills Jewish deli concept attracted long lines and happy customers buying staples like pastrami and less-seen offerings such as kasha varnishkes.
But the deal they had worked out with Magnolia Park had an endpoint.
“We couldn’t find another spot that we liked,” Bernson said. “And I realized I don’t want to move from spot to spot.”
When the current location became available in the San Anselmo shopping center, he felt it was beshert, or destiny.
Bernson is a food industry veteran originally from Connecticut and spent most of his food career catering on the East Coast before settling in the Bay Area more than a decade ago. A true carnivore, he developed a serious passion for smoked meat, and during the Covid pandemic took his passion to another level.
He began to realize that the North Bay was lacking serious deli (this was before Loveski opened its second location in Larkspur Landing and Ethel’s opened in Petaluma), so he and his daughter decided to do something about it.
They chose the name Bubbala’s because it represents warmth and family.
“You will always be your mother’s bubbala, and if you’re lucky enough to have kids, you have bubbalas,” Loiselle said in 2022. “This is really all about family.”
Bubbala’s has a casual vibe, with a large photo of Zayde Jack on the front door to welcome entering customers.
Bernson admits his grandfather is a funny person to be the deli’s patriarch, though. While “he believed everything happens in the kitchen, he was a pretty terrible cook,” he said. “He put onion soup mix in the hamburger because he read somewhere that it was good. And the pot roast was always dry.” Zayde Jack kept kosher and young Greg wondered why he couldn’t have a glass of milk to go with the dry roast.
Despite his grandfather’s less than stellar food, “he was one of the nicest, gentlest people you’ll ever meet,” he said. His father, meanwhile, was the family’s main cook; Bernson said he followed in both of their footsteps.
With that generational history, which foods did he feel were musts on the deli menu? “Obviously pastrami. It starts and ends with pastrami,” Bernson said. As much as he loves it, he can’t eat pastrami every day because of the high salt content and fattiness. Brisket, however, is another story.
“Our brisket is incredible,” he said.
I got a chance to taste it, and yes, it’s pretty incredible, served on a brioche roll with a slathering of horseradish sauce.
All of the rye, sandwich breads, rolls and bagels are baked by Alex Tishman’s Fire Swamp Provisions, a bakery started during Covid that I covered in July 2021.
The bagels were a sourdough hybrid at the start, but people who wanted more traditional bagels began complaining within days of opening. Bernson and Loiselle take customer feedback seriously; Tishman’s recipe has already been modified.
“And the potato pancakes have to be there, and they have to be good,” Bernson said. “They can’t be the deep-fried hockey pucks that you get everywhere.”
Matzah ball soup and blintzes are on the menu, though in the first few days they weren’t available. The inaugural batch of matzah balls didn’t come out right (“Ninety-eight percent of the time, I make a perfect knaidel,” he boasted back in 2022), and there was no time for the blintzes.
“I’ve been trying to make them for four days,” he said at the opening. “I just haven’t had the time.”
Other dishes include cauliflower shwarma and salads — a harissa Caesar and one called “good intentions salad” with kale, cabbage, grapefruit, avocado, crunchy chickpeas and more. Luckily, his daughter’s healthy contributions to the menu are a moderating force.
“I never would have put [salads] on there,” Bernson admitted. “But I think it’s fantastic.”
Loiselle, a trained pastry chef, said her father is “so good at what he does, with all the meat stuff. But he wants all of these men who love meat to come in, and they’re not going to come here if their wives can’t come with them,” she joked.
Loiselle has spent the last few years cooking with Marin’s gorgeous produce. Eventually, she’d like Bubbala’s to be supplied by local farms, but that’s not happening yet. What is happening are her desserts, starting with rugelach, which happens to be her favorite cookie and is a must-try.
“It’s all fat,” Loiselle said of her exceptional dough. “It’s mostly cream cheese and butter loosely held with flour and some nuts.” She makes a variety of ganaches for the rugelach fillings.
There are also cheesecake and cookies, and she intends to work up to cakes that will be sold by the slice.
She calls the sweets “Jewish inspired” and uses ingredients like halva or pomegranate when she can.
Despite the hiccups since opening, Bubbala’s has started to get rave reviews.
Bernson shared one Nextdoor post that said, “I moved from LA in 1984 so I’ve been spoiled by Canter’s, Nate n Al’s and Langer’s and I’ve literally been looking for FORTY years for something comparable.”
High praise, indeed.
Bubbala’s Neighborhood Eatery
Red Hill Shopping Center, 906 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., San Anselmo. Open 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Small Bites
When we wrote last spring about Holy Sushi opening a kosher sit-down restaurant in Palo Alto, it didn’t yet have a license to sell alcoholic beverages. Now, with its recently obtained license, the restaurant has stocked a variety of sake and Japanese beer.
Rabbi Joey Felsen, who owns Holy Sushi, admits he’s not a sake connoisseur (“I’ve tried both hot and cold”), but said it is easy to certify as kosher, which is why there are quite a few kinds on offer. Wine is coming soon, too, after distribution is arranged.
Felsen reported that opening the restaurant “has been an exciting ride” and said most of the customers aren’t kosher, and many are Japanese.
“But for the kosher-eating community,” he said, “it’s been unbelievable.”