Tag: urban deli

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We’re one year old – Whoo hoo!

It seems as if we opened our doors yesterday and today woke up to find ourselves one year old. Does time really move that quickly? Apparently — especially when you’re trying to serve food!

The Urban Deli opened on July 13, 2009. One year later, we’re still here.

It’s fascinating what happens while you’re busy. We’ve had lots of customers come into the Deli and in what seems the blink of an eye some have become regulars, many have become friends, and our staff have become family.

But what has most amazed us has been the way Saint John has welcomed and taken us in, and how Uptown Saint John has made us a part of one of the most exciting and growing communities anywhere in the country.

“Thank you Saint John,” doesn’t come close to saying how grateful we are to the Port City but, thank you Saint John!

And a huge thank you to our staff — not just for the work you do, but the way you do it.

Year one is behind us; the future is ahead and wide open. We’re loving it!

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Cool off in Uptown Saint John

To our friends in Fredericton, who we understand are experiencing some rather toasty weather, and to our friends a bit more inland in Saint John … Cool off in our Uptown! Pay us a visit – the weatherman tells us it won’t be quite so hot here. 😉

And if you make the trip, you could pay us a visit at the Deli. (This is where we insert a shameless plug.) And maybe try a glass of our scratch lemonade (made with real lemons):

Unless you would prefer our ice-tea (made with a blend of teas and cranberry juice):

Our the root beer on tap that we get from our friends at Pump House:

If you can’t make it down, be sure to get out, wherever you are, and enjoy our wonderful Maritime weather – be it hot and humid, or a little cooler – but still humid. Enjoy your day!

(By the way … we also have root beer floats!)

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The ladies behind the scene

Urban Deli will be celebrating its first year in business on July 13th.  We are also celebrating a year anniversary for two very special team members: Dale and Candy.

Food wise, everything at the Urban Deli begins with Dale and Candy who we label ‘the ladies from the second floor.’

The ladies work daily to consistently prepare our customer’s favourite menu items.  From our daily quiche, pulled pork BBQ sauce, gluten-free cheese sauce to our very popular maple vinaigrette and wasabi vinaigrette dressings, split pea and ham soup, homemade buttermilk biscuits, deli mustard right through to our muffuletta ‘muff-uh-LET-uh, Deli burgers and of course the piece de resistance….our homemade desserts.

A meal without one of the Urban Deli desserts by Dale is incomplete.  Dale’s repertoire of desserts include and are not limited to; Our very popular carrot cake with filling, lemon sour cream pie, apple crumble, chocolate molten cake and cookies.  From our second floor you can find Candy and Dale working hard at squeezing lemons for our scratch lemonade or brewing our famous ice tea made from five tea blends.

Many of our products have been tweaked and fine tuned by the ladies so they can capture the right consistency.  Recipes at the Deli are always evolving and we always welcome customer feedback. For everyone at the Deli there is more to our food; It is both an art and a science.

Recipes to success are simple…hire team members like Candy and Dale who:

  • Want to be at work
  • Have a sense of humour
  • Are very reliable/committed
  • Have strong communication, organizational and time management skills
  • Want to have fun and can laugh at themselves first J
  • Don’t take things personally…because receiving ongoing feedback for the purpose of fine-tuning recipes in order to deliver a consistently great product to our customer is critical to everyone’s success

Thank you Dale and Candy and we look forward to celebrating year two with each of you!

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We had a fabulous weekend …

… And it all started with a incredible Canada Day in Uptown Saint John. Even the dogs were caught up in the feeling we call Canada.

The Deli had a little setup in front of the UD (the restaurant was closed) where we sold breakfast and pulled pork sandwiches outside the doors. We also had cold drinks like our scratch lemonade and ice-tea. It was a fun way to be working and being out meeting people enjoying the day. We have photos on our Facebook page here.

The photo above of Lianne and Liz and our extraordinary helpful helper was just one of loads of photos Beaver Smith took (many thanks!). If you want to really see what Saint John’s Uptown looked like on this Canada day, have a look at his photos.

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Canada Day and what we’re up to

We’ll be doing something a little different for Canada Day. The Urban Deli will be closed, but kind of open too. Here’s what we’re doing:

The restaurant will be closed. However, we’ll have a stand directly outside our front doors selling food and cold drinks (alongside the other vendors).

We’re taking it to the streets, so to speak.

We’ll start off with breakfast sandwiches at 9:00am (served on an english muffin) and also have our own scratch lemonade, home-made ice tea and other cold drinks available. If you like samosas, we’ll have those too (not made by the Deli) — five different kinds of samosas that include beef, chicken, lamb, vegetarian and sweet potato.

Once the breakfast sandwiches are either sold out or 11:00am hits, we’ll be switching it up and selling our pulled pork & slaw on an english muffin.

We’re normally closed on Sundays and holidays so all of us (our staff) can enjoy the days, but this time we wanted to be there in Uptown Saint John. It’s Canada Day and we expect the Uptown to be hopping.

And who in their right mind would want to miss a Canada Day in the Port City?

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The life of mustard in pictures

You can get mustard at many stores. But rather than leave the kitchen, we make our Urban Deli mustard in-house. Like so:

With our mustard, we like to put it on a sandwich, in this fashion:

When we’re done, it looks like this:

That would be our Original Montreal Style Smoked Meat. We serve it with a dill pickle spear and our coleslaw.

And that’s a day in the life of mustard. 🙂

(You’ll find more Urban Deli photos on our Facebook page.)

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Three nominations for the Urban Deli

Yippie kay ay! The Uptown Saint John’s 2010 Live Life Awards shortlist has been announced and the Urban Deli finds itself nominated in three categories. Thank you Saint John! (Apologies to Bruce Willis for the “Yippie kay ay!” but it’s from the old cowboys and basically means, whoo hoo!)

We find the Deli in these categories:

  • New Business of the Year
  • Best Restaurant of the Year
  • Commercial Space of the Year

This is thrilling for us. Now the countdown is on to June 24th (Thursday) to see if we can bring home the big prizes.

A big thank you to everyone who recommended us and a “hats off” salute to the other nominees (who are probably as thrilled as we are).

Once again, thank you Saint John! We’re looking forward to a fabulous evening. We love it here and it’s wonderful to be back home!

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