I have been with Kush Hospitality Group for six years; I run all the restaurants, but my home base is Kush Hialeah, where we just celebrated our third year.
We are considered a deli, but facets of the restaurant are like a diner. We have a counter with seating, plus booths and tables. We make everything from scratch. We have a soup warmer because we make four different soups every day, and we use steamtables to keep our homemade corned beef, pastrami and meatballs warm. We boil the beef in a large, 150-gallon pot with our own pickling spice mixture and we smoke the pastrami in a small setup outside that can fit eight loins at a time.
Slicers are important, we hand-slice smoked meats the way former occupant Stephen’s Deli, did for over 60 years. I also have a 36-inch charbroiler that we use for our burgers. We have a 24-inch flattop griddle for everything from our egg sandwiches to French toast and Reuben sandwiches.
There is also a six-burner range that we use to make our soups – we do a chili, tomato bisque and matzo ball soup every day and sometimes split pea or lentil soup. We have a convection oven and two deep fryers, one for fries, the other for Florida alligator bites and chicken for our famous fried chicken and waffles.
We have three refrigerated prep tables to hold all the toppings for the sandwiches and fresh salads. There’s also a traditional expo – most of the time it’s myself, the general or my wife handling the expo. We’re a traditional kitchen in that we call it as it comes in, though we still use a ticketing system.
Hialeah is a now a predominantly Hispanic area – I was born in Colombia and raised in Miami – I pay tribute to that heritage. I make croquettes with pastrami like a Reuben instead of traditional ham. We also offer vegan and vegetarian dishes. I make a vegan meatloaf using a combination of vegetables and seitan. We only have two small freezers, mostly to hold the gator and the croquettes I freeze for service – they’re not needed much in our scratch deli kitchen.
