A Christmas tradition is getting an unexpected Jewish makeover.
Hank Schwartz’s Delicatessen & Appetizing, a pop-up Jewish deli in Jersey City, has announced that it will cap off Hanukkah with a Feast of the Smoked & Cured Fishes, a spin on the traditional Italian American Christmas Eve dinner known as the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The feast will debut during a kitchen takeover at The Alps wine bar in Jersey City on Monday, December 22, starting at 5 pm.
Confirmed fish dishes on the “seacuterie” board will include citrus gravlax, Nova smoked salmon, maple-bacon salmon candy, sablefish, fish roe, smoked trout, and a jazzed-up whitefish spread. Nestled among the fishes will be noshes like pickled peppers and onions, creamy dips and schmears, and za’atar-spiced olives. Additional items served will include latkes with applesauce, matzo ball soup and chocolate gelt coins. Guests can also partake in a Jewish-themed Jeopardy!, hosted by the deli’s owner, Jason Stahl.
Stahl got the idea for the feast while attending Christmas Eve dinners with his wife, Theresa, a cookbook writer who also works as a maître d’ and events coordinator at Corto (one of NJM’s favorite restaurants in Jersey City). “We’re an interfaith family, and we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas Eve and Christmas,” Stahl says. “We’re usually at my wife’s family, who have the Feast of the Seven Fishes. I just wondered, ‘Is there a way to put a Jewish spin on this?’”
For Stahl, Hanukkah is synonymous with holiday memories of his childhood on Staten Island: lighting menorahs, playing dreidel games and eating his mom’s latkes (“It’s almost like an art form,” he says of making the perfect potato pancake).
The idea for Hank Schwartz’s originated in 2019, when Stahl read Ted Merwin’s book Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli. When his contract with Google wasn’t renewed, Stahl decided to open a deli of his own. In 2021 he began by taking email orders—hamantaschen for Purim, matzo crunch for Passover—and delivering them around Jersey City and Hoboken. In 2023 he began vending at local farmers markets.
Stahl is currently seeking investors so he can open a brick-and-mortar location in his Jersey City Heights neighborhood. His deli accepts online orders via Google Forms; in 2026, he plans to launch a catering menu, which will include the seacuterie boards.
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