When Vincent’s, the restaurant that Big Dipper Hospitality Group opened as a pandemic grocery in 2020, shut its doors at the end of February, the group started planning a new concept: Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner, a sister space to the nearby deli.
“One of our strategic plans for this year was to continue to grow Mamaleh’s, and as much as we love Vincent’s and it was a wonderful place, in some ways it was a placeholder between Café du Pays and what was always going to come next, after the pandemic,” said Rachel Miller Munzer, chief executive of Big Dipper Hospitality Group, which also owns State Park, which has taken on Vincent’s famous Bodega Brunch. Café DuPays was open from 2017 to 2020.
Mamaleh’s, at 15 Hampshire St. with locations in Brookline and Boston, has established itself as a go-to Jewish deli that puts a modern spin on the old favorites. At the Kibitz, around the corner at 233 Cardinal Medeiros Ave., the emphasis is on community. The name comes from the Yiddish “kibitz” – a kind of easy, comfortable chitchat between friends, and the aim is to be a space where people come together through events open to the public such as comedy nights, book readings, community Shabbat and holiday dinners. The first of these community events is a Passover dinner April 26-27, with a prix fixe menu that includes matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, brisket and macaroons. There will be more family dinners and community programming to come.
“Our first event is booked for the middle of May, and it’s going to be a Jewish geography game show called ‘Who Knows One?’ and it’s going to be really fun,” Miller Munzer said. “We’re going to have consistent regular programming, ticketed event-type things, and we’re really excited to also be that place where people can come and host their own things.”
Booking is available for private parties and events for between 10 and 60 people.
Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner will run a weekend lunch counter, opening May 2. The deli will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday through Sunday with a vegan Mamaleh’s menu offering egg-substitute sandwiches, carrot lox for bagels, matzo ball soup without the chicken and homemade veganized chopped liver. (There’s also a vegan Not Chopped Liver at Lehrhaus, on Washington Street on the Cambridge line in Somerville’s Ward 2.)
“It’s really the classics, and I’m excited because there’s an opportunity here for people that keep a vegetarian or vegan diet and also people who keep kosher, who are not so strictly kosher that they don’t eat out but that they eat all vegetarian or vegan,” Miller Munzer said.
Big Dipper Hospitality will additionally use Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner as a kind of test kitchen for trying out recipes and technology. Miller Munzer hopes to make it a space where other local businesses can host their own pop-ups.
To sign up for Passover dinner, the April 26 registration is here; the April 27 registration is here.
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