Delicatessen

Located on a prime corner at the crossroads of Soho and Nolita, Delicatessen aches to be fashion forward. The restaurant boasts a staff seemingly out of a Gossip Girl casting call, sporting faux-hawks and Charlotte Ronson frocks. Bathrooms are wallpapered in Terry Richardson portraits, a magazine rack dangles the latest couture bibles, and there’s a lounge that’s perfect for sprawling out in while you wait for your table (two hours for walk-ins is the norm).

The restaurant, from the folks who brought us Cafeteria in Chelsea, was designed to impress not food critics, but downtown arbiters of up-to-date cool. So how to explain my considerable enjoyment seated at the bar midscrum, nursing a well-made Sazerac while fighting off the urge to finish every last morsel of my too-generous serving of crisp cheeseburger spring rolls?

Yes, the place is in-your-face brash and thunderously loud (despite being open to the street on two sides), but the food and service are so much better than this mob scene demands (or deserves). Scrawny waiters scramble double time to deliver plates piping hot from the kitchen. As a result, this weeks-old hot spot already feels like a years-old institution.

Chef Doron Wong, who’s worked in few places you’ve heard of (in New Jersey and Montauk, among other locales), has been using this nightclubby joint—think Schiller’s on steroids—as an unlikely showcase for his considerable talents. Reimagining comfort-food classics, he pays homage to the city’s old-school Jewish delis and to Greek greasy spoons, with melting-pot nods (tacos, banh mi) to lower Manhattan’s cheap ethnic eats.

His menu, featuring plenty of fried things for soaking up one too many drinks, is tailor-made for sating late-night postparty appetites. Among the ingenious junk food are golden, golf-ball-size Reuben fritters, with Swiss cheese, corned beef and kraut folded into the batter—a deli sandwich, hold the rye, with Russian dressing for dipping. Those beautifully crunchy cheeseburger spring rolls, with succulent ground beef and melted American cheese, are an even more brilliant bar-food innovation (I can’t believe no one else thought of it first).

Traditional deli dishes, meanwhile, get a more upscale chefly spin. Wong’s terrific matzo ball soup features extra-rich, twice-fortified stock—it probably won’t remind you of the kind your bubbe makes—floating carrots and celery, cubed white-meat chicken and plump, fluffy matzo-meal orbs. And while his version of a pastrami sandwich might not give Katz’s any reason to kvetch (though the meat comes from the same source), it’s still a choice gourmet nosh, featuring fatty, peppery hand-cut pastrami, whole-grain mustard and thick, crusty grilled rye.

The sandwich, like so much else on the menu, is huge and reasonably priced—two more pleasant surprises that seem out of sync with the setting. In fact, the restaurant’s real problems are ones of excess, particularly given the preponderance of skinny jeans squeezed into banquettes—too much mustard, too much mayo, just too much rich, fatty food (to be fair, there are also salads on the sprawling menu).

Fried chicken in a bucket includes five generous, juicy pieces (a half a bird) for $14, with a fine pepper-flecked buttermilk crust—plus vinegary red cabbage slaw, spicy jalapeño-cheddar corn bread and creamy, dunkable house-made ranch dressing. The extra-decadent beef Stroganoff features spoon-tender short ribs folded with sweet peas and plenty of sour cream into a big bowl of egg noodles. It’s the kind of simple, satisfying, rib-sticking dish you find yourself finishing though you know that you shouldn’t.

The belt-loosening desserts conjure up even more groans—of pleasure followed by pain. The kitchen pairs warm melted dipping chocolate with sticky marshmallows encrusted in graham cracker crumbs to create too-sweet and too-clever mess-free s’mores. The even more over-the-top signature black-and-white sundae features three scoops of ice cream, homemade mini black-and-white cookies, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and old-fashioned rainbow sprinkles. It’s best ordered with two or three spoons—or not at all if you’re really intent on fitting into those skinny jeans.