The Kibitz Room deli in Cherry Hill has reopened under familiar hands
Bankruptcy, eviction, and a family split reshaped the Kibitz Room deli. Now, the Cherry Hill location is back under Neil and Brandon Parish, who’d run it previously.
The slicers were turning again today at the Kibitz Room in Cherry Hill, sending out corned beef and pastrami in a deli saga with more twists than a challah.
For those following along:
The longtime Kibitz Room at the Shoppes at Holly Ravine, owned by Sandy Parish, closed abruptly in January and filed for bankruptcy protection in early February.
Then last month, the Kibitz Room in King of Prussia — a separate business owned by her former husband, Neil Parish, and their son Brandon — was evicted after about a year, amid mounting debt.
Meanwhile, Neil and Brandon Parish, backed by outside investors, negotiated a deal in Bankruptcy Court to buy the Cherry Hill equipment and sign a new lease there. The father and son said they had no ownership of the Cherry Hill deli.
“We’re getting back to what we were known for,” Neil Parish said Friday morning, as about a dozen employees prepped food and awaited customers shortly after its 9 a.m. opening. He and Brandon had spent weeks cleaning the deli, which seats about 60 beside its deli cases and familiar pickle bar.
Neil Parish bought the Cherry Hill deli in 2003 but left about a decade ago for his native Baltimore after he and Sandy Parish split. Sandy Parish continued operating it with Brandon, who left early last year to open in King of Prussia with his father.
The King of Prussia location, the former Michael’s Deli, was about three times the size — more of a full-service restaurant than the restaurant-deli counter hybrid in Cherry Hill.
“We thought we had a good spot, but it didn’t play out that way,” Neil Parish said.
Besides the landlord’s judgment for more than $194,000, Montgomery County Court records show claims including $1.2 million from Hanover Community Bank; $135,000 from Foods Galore, a distributor; and $23,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.
“In hindsight,” Neil Parish said, “it wasn’t the right fit. We just couldn’t make it work and we lost a lot of money. We moved away from our core Jewish deli trade and tried to adapt to something else.”
Cherry Hill, he said, is different. The deli “has been a community pillar for decades,” he said. Its customer base, he said, has always stretched beyond Cherry Hill to Camden, Marlton, Lindenwold, and elsewhere. “It’s always been a mix,” he said, “and that hasn’t really changed.”
The Parishes plan to keep Kibitz Room’s staples while adding some of King of Prussia’s better-received items, such as updated fish platters and caviar-topped latkes.
Parish said staffing was not a problem. “A lot of longtime people are back,” he said. “Some have been with us 20-plus years. That continuity matters.”
“I’ve loved working here,” said Jamie Devine, who started waiting tables at the deli several years ago. “It was easy to decide to come back.”
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