Owner, community members reflect on Mediterranean Deli one year after fire
Jamil Kadoura, owner of Med Deli, stands in the remains of his burned restaurant on August 22, 2023.
In July of last year, a fire broke out at Mediterranean Deli — a restaurant on Franklin Street — while a contractor was doing roofing work.
Monday, July 22, will mark one year since the fire, and staff and the community are eager for Med Deli’s full reopening after months of planning and construction.
The restaurant will reopen at its original location at 410 W. Franklin St. after rebuilding. While it will be the original setup, owner Jamil Kadoura said it will feature more modern equipment.
Jamil Kadoura, owner of Med Deli, stands in the dining room of his restaurant in Chapel Hill, N.C. on Saturday, Oct. 07, 2023. The fire in July spared the restaurant's front-half, but smoke and water damaged the dining room, deli, and market.
Hesaid the projected reopening date is at the end of December. He said he would have preferred to reopen in July or August, but there were too many factors out of his control.
Each time a change was made, everyone involved — including the engineering team and town officials — needed to approve it. He also said the materials took a long time to order.
"I was pushing, pushing, pushing," Kadoura said. "It’s like trying to control the temperature outside."
He said the biggest change will be the kitchen. Where there used to be a separate banquet room next to the kitchen, the space will instead be remodeled to allow for a kitchen expansion. Additionally, he said their gluten-free bakery, housed in a separate building downstairs, will be enlarged.
Since Med Deli is mostly a catering business, the larger kitchen spaces will be able to better handle the busy orders from catering than the previous kitchen did, Kadoura said.
"I’m making a kitchen that I really always dreamed of," Kadoura said.
Though the building does not have a mortgage on it and insurance covered the reconstruction costs, Kadoura said an extra $1.5 million is being invested into the new building because they want to make it nice.
Since the fire, Med Deli has been operating with a limited menu from the space located at 454 W. Franklin St., which used to be Elaine’s Restaurant.
The space has a small kitchen and is also where Med Deli houses their offices, Kadoura said.
Additionally, the restaurant has a stall in the bottom of Lenoir Dining Hall with a smaller menu to pick from.
Robbie Smith, a previous lawyer for Med Deli and Kadoura’s friend, said one reason the community is looking forward to the reopening of the restaurant is because it is the most community-focused business he has ever seen.
Throughout the years, Kadoura has had multiple charity benefits for a variety of causes including aid for flood victims in Pakistan and Syrian refugees. What set Kadoura apart, Smith said, is that he would donate 100 percent of the profit to the charities.
Med Deli is pictured during their fundraiser to assist the people impacted by the devastation of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023.
Photo Courtesy of Caroline Horne.
Smith also said Med Deli became a cross-cultural meeting ground for the community.
"For a lot of UNC students, particularly ones that came from little towns and hadn’t had that much exposure to much cultural diversity, it was kind of an exposure to people from different cultures and a different world," he said. "I think it helped people broaden their horizons a lot."
Stephanie Cobert, Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership's director of marketing and engagement, said it is great to have a balance of new businesses on Franklin Street while also retaining longtime fixtures of the community, such as Med Deli.
"We try to tell people that behind all of these marquees in downtown is a merchant who’s poured their heart and soul into that business, and [Kadoura] is one of them," she said.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
When Med Deli reopens, Kadoura said his first catering service will be for the Chapel Hill Fire Department. He said he was really touched by their response in putting the fire out and saving neighboring businesses from catching fire, too.
Kadoura said he is excited for his specialty market in the restaurant, to sell his gluten-free products he invented in the bakery and to cook fatayer — a Mediterranean meat pie dish.
"The closer it gets, the more excited I get," he said. "I didn’t feel this way if you called me three, four months ago, but now that I’m seeing the building, I’m thinking, 'Oh, God, Jamil, this is going to be nicer than before.'"
