Palmer deli offers ‘East Coast’ eats

PALMER — The people behind the recently opened Palmer Downtown Deli say they put their restaurant together with an eye on their neighbors.

“I tried to build a menu that other people in Palmer didn’t have,” said owner and operator Richard Stryken.

Located in the downtown plaza, it’s not as if similar establishments are terribly far away either. Turkey Red, another popular lunch spot in town, is in the same building.

“What we did is we built a business that compliments (Turkey Red),” he said. “We didn’t do anything that she really has on her menu at all.”

What that means is something that might be familiar to Mat-Su residents who are transplants from New York — an East Coast deli. The menu offers sandwiches — roast beef, chicken salad, etc. — wraps, two soups a day and flatbread pizza.

Stryken said the meals are made to order, but the deli has also started putting together some pre-made wraps and sandwiches.

“If people come in and they’re in a hurry they will actually be able to grab an avocado wrap or a salmon wrap and take off with it,” he said.

He said he brought on an experienced chef and put his wife in charge of running the business.

“She loves it. She’s actually been in the restaurant business for years. Our chef’s been around for 15 years,” he said.

With about a week under its belt, Stryken said business is booming. Downtown professionals stop by for lunch. There’s already talk about expanding the deli’s hours. For now they’re 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“In the future we’re going to have to start staying open, at least on Fridays and Saturdays, until 9,” he said.

He said the deli is already getting inundated with inquiries as to whether it delivers. They don’t — not yet at least.

“Everybody is waiting for us to start delivery, especially in the Palmer city limits,” he said. “What we want to do is perfect what we have and make sure we have good quality food.”

This is Stryken’s first foray into the restaurant business. He’s better known locally as a landlord. He said he owns nine buildings in Palmer and is a strong believer in the town and its downtown.

When the national video rental chain Movie Gallery went out of business and shut down its Palmer store, Stryken said his efforts led to moving that inventory into a new video store.

“We bought that store out and kept the same employees,” and even opened a branch in Meadow Lakes, he said.

When businesses fled Palmer en masse, a phenomenon Stryken chalks up to a lot of rumors and a Frontiersman article painting a gloomy picture of the city as a place to do business, he said his strip mall, the one that now includes the deli, mostly cleaned out. So he found other entrepreneurs to take their place.

“We’ve got an awesome chocolate shop in there,” he said. There’s also an art gallery and a tanning salon. “We’ve actually got some great businesses in there right now and it’s actually working really well.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.