For this deli owner’s son, there’s nothing wrong with a career in chopped liver

Since Brandon Parish could stand on a milk crate and wash dishes for his father at the Kibitz Room in Cherry Hill, delis have been his “comfort zone.”

“I didn’t want to be in camp,” Parish, 31, said last week. “I didn’t want to be at school. If it wasn’t the lacrosse field, I wanted to be at the shop. It was just the whole environment. The people who worked there were a second family.”

This week, Parish opens his own deli-restaurant, the Kibitz Room King of Prussia — say it “KIB-itz,” loosely translated from Yiddish as “chitchat” — in a shopping center on Route 202, a mile north of King of Prussia Mall.

With seating for more than 200 people spread throughout two dining rooms and in a smaller party room, it’s more than four times the size of the Cherry Hill deli, which his father, Neil, bought 22 years ago. Brandon Parish’s mother, Sandy, took over that location nearly a decade ago after she and Neil split up. Brandon worked for his mother until last month; the two locations are owned separately, he said.

Parish has been eager to open his own deli for some time. He initially had a deal in Montgomeryville, but it fell through. His wife, Jessica, had lived in King of Prussia near the former Michael’s Deli (most recently, KOP Grill & Tavern).

Having grown up in South Jersey, Parish said he realized that there are very few locally owned and operated family businesses in King of Prussia, aside from pizzerias and hoagie shops. Kibitz Room not only would be a family restaurant, but it would be one of the few open early for breakfast. Regular hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. King of Prussia is also full service, while Cherry Hill is not.

Neil Parish, 60, who relocated from Baltimore, is in charge of the food at the new deli, whose menu embraces the Jewish deli food canon: outsize corned beef and pastrami sandwiches, matzo balls the size of softballs, knishes, chicken pot pies, braised short ribs, and even a garlicky flank steak modeled on the classic served at Sammy’s Roumanian in New York.

Last week, Neil Parish was standing over a vat of boiling water to cook kishka, an Eastern European sausagelike delicacy of flour, matzo meal, beef fat, chicken fat, carrots, onions, celery, and spices that few delis make in-house anymore. Also on the heavier side, they’re offering gribenes, the chicharrones-like fried chicken skins that are the byproduct of rendering chicken fat, a.k.a. schmaltz. In a month or so, the Parishes said, they will start offering tableside chopped liver service and are considering making egg creams tableside, as well.

“As big as the menu is, we have probably four times that in different ideas and different things that are still very ‘Jewish deli,’ but with a nice twist,” Neil Parish said.

In the rear of the main dining room is a service deli whose cases are stocked with meats, cheeses, smoked fish, three kinds of herring, blintzes, stuffed peppers, salads, and baked goods — all baked in-house, such as gigantic cakes, black-and-white cookies, and pastries. There’s also a retail section with oils, vinegars, tinned fish, syrups, and crackers.

“I feel like this really encapsulates the Jewish deli as a whole experience,” Brandon Parish said. “The old, the new, the vibe, the aesthetic, the personality, the quality, the menu mix. We don’t do anything that’s not traditional or that doesn’t come from traditional Jewish deli roots.”

Brandon Parish scoffs at the occasional reports that Jewish delis are going out of style. “Sandwiches have made a comeback,” he said. “I think if you do it well, then you never have to worry about failure. But most delis are all doing the same thing.”

Neil Parish, a native of Baltimore, worked for the Cracker Barrel chain in the late 1990s. He and his family lived in Clementon, N.J., and the children attended Hebrew school at Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill. Rather than drive home after dropping them off, Parish hung out at the nearby Springdale Deli, becoming immersed in the atmosphere.

In 2000, local deli legend Russ Cowan bought the deli and renamed it the Kibitz Room.

Parish said he walked in for a sandwich and asked Cowan: “Who did you steal the name from?” Cowan, nonplussed, bet Parish that he couldn’t guess. But Parish knew that “Kibitz Room” was a seating area at Attman’s Delicatessen in Baltimore. The men bonded.

By then, Parish said, “I was bored out of my mind with my corporate job.” Parish began working two days for Cowan and moved to full-time almost right away.

In 2003, Parish bought the Kibitz Room from Cowan, using his daughter’s bat mitzvah gifts as the down payment. “She got four years at Syracuse, all covered,” Parish said. “It was a good investment.”

(In 2005, Cowan bought Famous 4th Street Deli in Philadelphia, which he sold last year. Cowan now owns Radin’s Deli in Cherry Hill, five minutes from the Kibitz Room, on the previous site of Short Hills Deli.)

Although Parish’s older children — Laurie and Adam — helped at the deli while growing up, they pursued nonfood careers. “He never wanted anything else,” Neil said of Brandon.

In 2009, at age 15, Brandon began working the cash register at a former Kibitz location near Rittenhouse Square. “It was always school first, obviously, and when I was able to work, he put me to work,” he said.

Although Brandon did not enjoy academia, his father insisted that he go to college. He enrolled at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., to study culinary and food-service management. The summer after graduation in 2016, he and his father opened a Kibitz location in Margate — his first shot at management.

“He kind of threw me the keys and told me to have fun,” Brandon said. But it wasn’t so much fun. After Labor Day, they realized that Shore customers did not want deli. He returned to Cherry Hill, and Neil opened a deli in Baltimore — the Essen Room, which his friend Lou Ellison now runs.

Though Neil has his opinions and his own way, he made it clear last week that “this is Brandon’s store,” he said.

“I’m on the way out. He’s on the way up.”