Only a year and a half after opening Falling Sky Brewing’s pub, co-owners Rob Cohen and Jason Carriere didn’t expect to open a second location. But when they found the place at 790 Blair Blvd., they fell in love with it.

Pour House & Delicatessen opened in July, welcoming young and old alike in a new brewpub-deli inspired by East Coast Jewish delicatessens, adding to the Falling Sky family, which already included the 13th Avenue fermentation shop and the Oak Alley pub. “We think of them as cousins,” Cohen says. “They are related in some ways, aesthetically and in the experience, but this is a Northwest contemporary delicatessen.” Cohen is particularly proud of the long wooden tables; almost all of them were made out of the same 100-foot-long tree, a process that took three months. 

If the two locations look alike, the menus differ greatly. By “Northwest delicatessen,” Cohen means a deli inspired by East Coast Jewish delicatessens but with Northwest ingredients. Chef Corey Wisun pitched the idea to Cohen and Carriere. “I am not trying to do traditional East Coast Jewish food,” says Wisun, who was raised in a Jewish household in South Florida. “I’m taking the dishes that I grew up on, and I’m putting a spin on it. I’m modernizing it using quality local ingredients.”

Everything they do is from scratch. Take the most popular dish so far: the pastrami sandwich. They cure the meat themselves to obtain a unique smoked pastrami. They bake their own bread in a 60-year-old Swedish oven they discovered on eBay and even prepare their own mustard for this high-quality sandwich. The smell of smoked meat sometimes escapes the open space kitchen. You can see your dish being prepared from your table or from the street. 

In a different style, Wisun recommends the pickled albacore loin with parsley fennel salad, a light, summery and very tasty dish. The chicken liver mousse with fig sauce is also among his favorites.

“It’s kind of a mishmash of Jewish influence from the world,” he says. A lot of the East Coast deli food is of Eastern European origin, but Wisun is also trying to fuse that with some Sephardic Jewish influences from Morocco, Spain, Tunisia and the Middle East. 

All ingredients are local and sustainably raised, and the menu will change seasonally. For the upcoming fall, Wisun says they will turn to fall fruits, root vegetables and, for proteins, ducks and rabbits. And if you have a sweet tooth, Pour House is not to be outdone. Its Jewish pastries, such as the rugalech, a pâte brisée with seasonal jam that looks like a little croissant, is delicious.

Like Falling Sky, the deli offers a variety of beers. “Something for everybody’s palate,” says co-owner Carriere, who has been running Falling Sky’s homebrew shop for more than 10 years. With 15 beers on the menu, beyond the popular IPA beers, Carriere says they also offer more traditional English-style beers like bitter, lager and session beers. Their selection of wine is also local and the bar consists of exclusively West Coast liquors. 

The last novelty at the deli: house-made and Italian-style sodas with syrup and sparkling water that they also use for cocktails. Between that, the English beers from Falling Sky Breweing and the new spin on Jewish food, unique flavors are guaranteed at what Cohen is proud to call the very first “deli-brewery” in the country.

The Falling Sky Pour House & Delicatessen is open 11 am to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and 11 am to 1 am Thursday through Saturday at 790 Blair Blvd., 653-9167, fallingskybrewing.com/deli.

Pictured above: house-smoked chicken and house-cured corned beef. Photos by Trask Bedortha.

Comments are closed.