Monty’s Deli launches £50k crowdfund bid for permanent site

Monty’s Deli, the south London Jewish deli market stall, has launched a £50,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign to open its first restaurant, having already reached £30,000 in three weeks.

Supporters for the Kickstarter campaign ‒ which started on 14 October, finishes on 13 November and currently has 418 backers ‒ already include chef and food writer Gizzi Erskine, chef Tom Kerridge and The Observer’s restaurant critic, Jay Rayner.

Owners of Monty’s Deli, Mark Ogus and Owen Barrett, plan to take over a 2,700 sq ft site in east London. The venue will serve as as their production kitchen as well as a 50-cover restaurant.

There are also plans for a new smoker, steam oven, veg prep, walk-in refrigerator, extraction unit and blast chiller.

The move will see the operation move from a weekend-only stall to a seven-day-a-week operation, and the stall is set to close on 18 December, although there is no date on the opening of the new east London venue.

The restaurant will open in the mornings for breakfast and brunch, afternoon for lunch and tea and in the evenings for dinner service, and will continue with its takeaway service as well as operating a fully stocked bar.

It plans to product all its own salt beef and pastrami as well as smoked meats and sandwiches in-house.

There will be more traditional dishes added to its food offer and it plans to extend into homemade pickles and mustards and sharing plates. It also plans to bake hundreds of bagels a day with the new facilities. As with all Kickstarter projects, should the campaign be successful, donors will receive rewards in return for their money, including T-shirts with the Monty's Deli logo, and an ironic tea towel printed with the stall's 'worst' TripAdvisor review. 

Monty's Deli opened as a market stall in 2012. The sandwiches were soon declared by chef Tom Kerridge as 'the best value lunch in London'.