The Olympics are on, Pimms Cups are flowing, and the spirit of… Hanukkah is thriving at the White Horse Pub in Peckham, London where the Wildes Deli pop-up is serving up perfect latkes.
Until 2022, Ollie Grater’s closest connection to a food career was working at Deliveroo, a British online food delivery company. But as he sat at his desk, he found himself reminiscing about his childhood in North-West London where his Jewish upbringing revolved largely around food.
“I hated my tech job,” he told The Nosher. “I had become the kind of person who was ‘living for the weekend.’
“I’d been playing with the idea of a Jewish deli and [in 2022] I thought ‘right, screw this I’m gonna do this.’”
Ollie had dreams of not only having his own deli, but of bringing Jewish food and culture to other parts of the city.
“For me, being Jewish is more cultural than religious,” said Ollie. “It was more about how every holiday season is based around getting people together to eat food, and the camaraderie around the table.”
So Ollie concocted a plan. He was going to bring Jewish food out of its niche cultural corners in London and out to the people.
Only 1.6% of Londoners are Jewish, so it’s no surprise that, unlike in New York where around 10% of residents are Jewish, Jewish delis are few and far between. Still, for a city that is so multicultural, there is a notable lack of Ashkenazi food.
Ollie said: “I couldn’t get the food [that I wanted] anywhere or the places that did exist weren’t really for me.” And, perplexingly, while bagels were popular, challah was not.
“There’s a whole bagel thing happening [right now], but hopefully people are coming across challah,” said Ollie, whose menu is filled with challah sandwiches, like the “LJ Cheese” — crispy latke, pickle schmear, candied jalapeño relish, American and Emmental cheese, and hot sauce on challah — delicious enough to make you want to start spinning dreidels.
Ollie left his job and poured his knowledge about startups into his own kitchen. He joked that he’d worked in a kitchen when he was 17 and quickly discovered that it’s not the same when you’re 35. But, despite backaches, he brought a single-minded passion and focus to what would soon become Wilde’s. He tested everything over and over again, doing over 100 test runs of salt beef before his first pop-up. Much like the modern diaspora, Wilde’s menu starts with Jewish roots and branches out across classic British foods, such as changing corned beef in a classic Reuben to a more British salt beef, or branching into further fields, such as a sushi-inspired lox sandwich with wasabi schmear and pickled ginger salmon.
For Ollie, “The ambition is to really take this cuisine to the people and for it to be hopefully a very London British take on a deli that works long-term that’s contemporary.”
Ollie’s most nerve wracking moment was not his first stall in July 2023, but when he moved his pop-up to a pub in North-West London, close to the area where he grew up.
“I thought: Sh*t, there’s gonna be a lot of Jews who know this food and will have a lot of opinions on it.
“But it turned out to be amazing for us. Yeah a lot of Jews came down but they were really supportive. We had a few comments on how it wasn’t traditional but by and large it was very popular.”
It was more than popular. Wilde’s was visited by comedian David Baddiel and Jon Torrode of MasterChef who posted about their meals and propelled Ollie into the spotlight.
Opening a Jewish deli in 2024 could be seen by some as a dangerous or naive move.Since October 7th, antisemitic incidents in London rose by over 1000%, but Ollie pushed back on that idea.
“I run a restaurant, I deal in food and I feel like my responsibility is to do things as well as I can and to have a positive impact of bringing people together,” he said. “My approach is that we can have the most positive impact through food.”
His dream is to have his own deli where everybody feels welcome, and most importantly, where challah is king.
Wilde’s is at the White Horse in Peckham until October 13. Keep updated at: @wildesdeli.
