Dining Review: Maven’s Delicatessen in Pawtucket

A bowl of matzo ball soup. Photography by Angel Tucker

Jewish deli has the rare ability to elicit nostalgia — or at least familiarity — in people from all areas of the country and with diverse backgrounds. 

It’s hard to pinpoint how this works, other than to acknowledge that Jewish food — notably, bagels, lox and brisket cooked in several ways — has become such an integral piece of the American diet that taking part in the ritual of eating conjures memories for everyone at the table. (A toasted bagel may not be quite as ubiquitous as toasted bread, but it’s a worthy competitor.) 

Beyond the food itself, however, a deli stands for something. It rarely serves alcohol, it always makes sandwiches, and it often considers potatoes a sacred form of nutrition. Add these random qualities together and you get a family restaurant that’s as appealing to an eight-year-old as it is to an eighty-year-old. 

Potato latkes. Photography by Angel Tucker

It’s tough to articulate the requisite aesthetic of a delicatessen, but you know it when you see it. Jason Sugarman knows it, too. He opened Maven’s in early December and, once through the door, it’s hard to remember if you walked in from a Pawtucket parking lot or right off New York City’s Second Avenue. 

The restaurant is glossy and bright but there’s a retro appeal that comes as much from the large vintage wall photo of two guys in yarmulkes eating Chinese food (“Blessed by Rabbi Ralbag!”) as it does from the black-and-white geometric floor tile, and the glass case full of two-foot-long salamis, housemade corned beef, pastrami and cold salads, as well as a dessert case stocked with black and white cookies, cheesecake and carrot cake. 

But some of the mood also emanates from a hospitality team that falls into two groups. There are the young servers who tend to bring and take plates in a direct manner and the older waitstaff who are as interested in the people eating as they are in clearing the table. One server declares, “I’m Irish and Italian but when I heard there was a schnitzel on the menu, I thought, ‘That’s my home, too.’ Am I right?” The eagerly nodding couple at the table looks like they might ask her to sit and share that chicken cutlet sandwich, nestled between thick slices of challah and shmeared with lemon-caper mayo ($15.95). Because that is the way a deli works. 

Slow-roasted brisket sandwich. Photography by Angel Tucker

So much so that customers have been largely forgiving when the entire state of Rhode Island turned out for Maven’s opening month and the kitchen was quickly overwhelmed. Back then, hours were temporarily scaled back, the menu was tightened, and managers were quick to comp a knish when the service got rocky. (It’d be tough to yell at your grandma if food was late in getting to the table, and some of that sentiment exists here, where everyone in the room reminds you of some distant relative or friend from yesteryear.) Now that they’ve evened out the kinks, they’re back to being open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

But the food still arrives to the table in self-deprecating style. Matzo ball soup ($10.95) is described on the menu as “Not as good as your Bubbe’s, of course.” The bowl, however, is noteworthy: Broth is dark with thinly sliced carrots and the whole thing tastes of schmaltz, deeply flavored and melting on the tongue. Some of the matzo balls are cooked through and light, others slightly dense from a cursory bath in the broth — but in its totality, the soup manifests comfort in the most visceral way.  

A selection of desserts. Photography by Angel Tucker

Potatoes are the other fallback for coziness. Latkes ($5.95), served two at a time, are crisp on the outside and soft on the interior — not hot out of the oil but a strong iteration, served with applesauce and sour cream. Knishes ($7.95), however, may be the only misstep on the menu. They’re the baked variety but covered in a dough thick enough to distract from the potato itself. Better to go with the tallow-fried fries ($4.95), which hit the sweet spot between soft and crispy. 

The real highlight of Maven’s, however, is the unification of brisket and bread. Brisket is braised with caramelized onions and slathered with horseradish cream sauce on griddled challah for the Up Street Dip ($16.95). It’s cured, boiled, seared, steamed and hand-cut to make corned beef. Pastrami is also wet-cured, rubbed with spices, smoked for hours, then cooled, steamed and hand-cut to order. Both versions are served separately as sandwiches or half & half style on stellar housemade rye bread ($19.95–$26.45). Even if they fall apart in your hand, they epitomize the manner in which love shapeshifts into food. 

The bright interior of Maven’s Delicatessen has a retro appeal like you may see in New York. Photography by Angel Tucker

In fact, most things on the menu taste like childhood to a wide swath of diners — if not through corned beef and mustard, then by way of fried disks of salami ($15.45), hot dogs with sauerkraut ($7.25), or griddled rye served alongside egg and whitefish salad ($14.95). If the world has a common comfort food, it’s bread — and, like every deli, Maven’s delivers everything packed into those assorted envelopes: bagels, challah, rye and sourdough are all soft, chewy harbingers of a kinder, gentler time in life. 

The space, which seats well over a hundred, looks expansive but the experience is an intimate one. Servers wear T-shirts with assorted Yiddish sayings on the back (chutzpah, meshuganah) and those same over-forty staff members speak the cultural language proficiently. One server asks a middle-aged man eating a pastrami sandwich at 5:30 p.m. if he wanted a Dr. Brown’s soda or a coffee and, though he ordered a root beer, he responds by saying, “You know, my grandmother drank coffee with every sandwich she ever ate no matter what time of day it was.” The waitress, having apparently never seen him before, nods in time and says, “Right? They all did.” 

Housemade rye loaves. Photography by Angel Tucker

There’s a sense of extended family inside a delicatessen, and Sugarman has made it his business to replicate that quality. This may be the first in an expansive Maven’s footprint because, if he can get the mechanics down of a twelve-hour-a-day restaurant, he’s betting that there’s an ample audience for noshing all over the state and well into casino territory (where he and his father, Lloyd Sugarman, own the Sugar Factory). Jason Sugarman also owns several Pokeworks franchise locations, and his father was the original partner of Johnny Rockets, which started out on Thayer Street. 

Not everyone grew up eating matzo brie for breakfast or black and white cookies for dessert, but like American Southern food, there’s something here that transcends geography, something that pulls people into a social dynamic beyond their own identity. Some might argue that’s the very point of communal eating: not only to hear someone else’s story but for that narrative to make an impression deep enough to become sensory. Want to see it in action? There’s a plate of pastrami in Pawtucket waiting to convince you.

A pastrami sandwich on rye. Photography by Angel Tucker

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MAVEN’S DELICATESSEN

727 East Ave., Pawtucket, 205-8560, mavensdeli.com

Open all day; closed on Mondays. Wheelchair accessible. Lot parking. 

CUISINE: Bagels and lox and everything else you’d find at a good NYC deli. 

CAPACITY: 100-plus.  

VIBE: Vintage.

PRICES: Noshes: $3.95–$10.95; entrees: $8.85–$26.45; dessert: $2.95–$3.95. 

KAREN’S PICKS: Any sandwich, a loaded latke and a Dr. Brown’s cream soda.