Five years in the making, this Raleigh sandwich shop is finally ready for its debut
For five or so years, Matt Fern has had a theoretical restaurant in his head. Or as he would call it, a restaurant-ish.
That restaurant is finally ready to open.
(Ish) Delicatessen will open Monday, July 19, bringing new sandwiches to the Raleigh lunch scene. (Ish) will open in the former Pharmacy Cafe space at 702 N. Person St., in Raleigh.
The long-awaited sandwich shop took its first form over the last month, delivering sandwiches to Person Street Bar, Pelagic bottle shop and Longleaf Hotel.
The plan is to roll out (Ish) three days a week for lunch to start, beginning with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
So far, the (Ish) menu has included a pastrami Reuben served on Boulted Bread rye, a chicken salad saltimbocca, pork carnitas and smoked fish melt. So far, they’ve all sold out.
Even as pop-ups, Fern’s sandwiches are finally growing beyond the page, from theory to reality.
“Gratifying isn’t necessarily the right word, because it’s beyond that,” Fern said.
This month marks five years since Fern left his job as beverage director of Ashley Christensen’s AC Restaurant Group to open his dream sandwich shop. He tried to open in one Raleigh space, then another, and then a pandemic happened.
“It’s one of the most emotional things I’ve ever gone through,” Fern said. “I’ve put all this work in and seen it fall through for various reasons. ... I stayed with it and stayed positive.
“None of these reasons were because I failed or were my fault, I hadn’t stumbled on my face,” Fern said. “So I always kind of kept that dream alive.”
Now he said he’s pivoting like all other restaurants over the last year, embracing take-out and delivery and whatever else keeps the doors open.
“Everyone had a pivot year, now it’s my turn,” Fern said. “We’ll start small and add more as we add more people, hopefully into a full grown restaurant. ... (Pop-ups are) such a neat way to roll this out. It kind of happened serendipitously.”
Making a sandwich
Fern has a notebook of recipes he has tested and tweaked and kept and given up on over the last five years. He wrote the first one in October 2016, a recipe for pastrami, eventually adding the annotation, “NOPE” in big letter.
“I would sit with it and write it and make it and eat it,” Fern said. “I’d give some to friend as a kind of test kitchen. This book is filled with thoughts of how recipes come together and weird little notes.”
The (Ish) pastrami on the opening menu is the 12th version Fern has gone through. This one is brined for six days, which Fern said is a little on the quick side, then seasoned and smoked and steamed until done.
“Until it’s jiggly and delicious,” Fern said.
This story was originally published July 16, 2021 at 6:15 AM with the headline "Five years in the making, this Raleigh sandwich shop is finally ready for its debut."
