Delicatessen off the beaten path

News

Staff Writer

There are plenty of places for breakfast or lunch Downtown and most of them are easily visible from the sidewalk. You can’t see Akel’s Delicatessen from the street but that doesn’t stop a steady line of customers from finding the restaurant on the first floor of the JEA Building at 21 W. Church St.

Mitri Akel and his staff of two kitchen helpers and two people who work the front counter clock in early in the morning to prepare to serve breakfast from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Akel’s offers a full menu, including breakfast sandwiches and wraps, omelets, homemade muffins and biscuits and gravy.

The lunch menu features just about any kind of sandwich, salad or burger to fit your mood, plus a few items not often found on Downtown lunch menus.

The Mediterranean specialties sell well, said owner Mitri Akel.

“I think we have the best tabouli and hummus in town,” he added.

“We also specialize in vegetarian meals,” said Akel, pointing to the “Veggieterranean” section of the menu. Those sandwiches combine tabouli with lettuce and tomato, hummus with sliced cucumbers and feta cheese, and hummus with tabouli, lettuce and tomato.

Akel’s Delicatessen will celebrate its second anniversary in two weeks. Akel said JEA asked him to look at the space and as soon as he saw it he knew it would be a great location for a restaurant since it was in a building full of office workers. Since then the building’s population has had its ups and downs along with the economy.

“Business took a dip toward the end of 2008,” he said. After JEA layoffs, “we had a little slow period. If we can make it through that, we can make it through anything,” said Akel.

He learned the food service business from his father, who moved the family to Jacksonville from Long Island, N.Y., in 1992 when the elder Akel, Ishac, opened the Around the Corner Deli on Hogan Street. Uncle Marvin Akel owns Little Joe’s Cafe in the St. Joe Building on Riverside Avenue.

Akel said his father taught him everything he knows about the business, including the family recipes, and Akel opened his Downtown deli with some good advice.

“The first thing my father told me was to serve quality food and have the fastest service Downtown,” he said. “Some of the people who work in the building get only half an hour for lunch, so we make sure we can get their food out in less than five minutes. Some of the sandwiches we make in less than a minute.”

Akel credits the success of the operation to a simple formula.

“You have to work hard, have teamwork and communicate. You also have to love what you do. I’m not an office kind of guy. I have to move around and work with my hands.

“If I couldn’t have the restaurant and had to do something else, I’d go to culinary school,” he said.